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Intimate Apparel Preview

Raleigh Little Theatre Preview
By Robert W. McDowell, Triangle Theatre Review

“INTIMATE APPAREL” BY LYNN NOTTAGE CHRONICLES THE LIFE AND LOVES
OF AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN SEAMSTRESS, LIVING IN NEW YORK, CIRCA 1905

Raleigh Little Theatre will stage INTIMATE APPAREL, a prize-winning 2004 Off-Broadway hit by African-American playwright Lynn Nottage, on Sept. 7-9, 13-16, and 20-23 in its Gaddy-Goodwin Teaching Theatre. RLT youth theater and education director Linda O’Day Young will direct an all-star cast that includes Barbette Hunter as Esther, a black seamstress living in Lower Manhattan; LaDawna Akins as Mrs. Dickson, the bossy landlady of the respectable boardinghouse where Esther lives; Staci Sabarsky as Mrs. Van Buren, a socialite who lives on Fifth Avenue; Sharon Tazewell as Mayme, a prostitute and pianist in a local sporting house; Leon Sabarsky as Mr. Marks, an Orthodox Jewish fabric salesman; and Joseph Callender as George, Esther’s West Indian pen pal who wins her heart with his letters while he is working on the Panama Canal.
 
According to Dramatists Play Service, Inc.:
 
“The time is 1905, the place New York City, where Esther [played for RLT by Barbette Hunter], a black seamstress, lives in a boarding house for women and sews intimate apparel for clients who range from wealthy white patrons to prostitutes. Her skills and discretion are much in demand, and she has managed to stuff a goodly sum of money into her quilt over the years. One by one, the other denizens of the boarding house marry and move away, but Esther remains, lonely and longing for a husband and a future. Her plan is to find the right man and use the money she’s saved to open a beauty parlor where black women will be treated as royally as the white women she sews for. By way of a mutual acquaintance, she begins to receive beautiful letters from a lonesome Caribbean man named George [Joseph Callender] who is working on the Panama Canal. Being illiterate, Esther has one of her patrons respond to the letters, and over time the correspondence becomes increasingly intimate until George persuades her that they should marry, sight unseen. Meanwhile, Esther’s heart seems to lie with the Hasidic shopkeeper from whom she buys cloth [Leon Sabarsky as Mr. Marks], and his heart with her, but the impossibility of the match is obvious to them both, and Esther consents to marry George. When George, arrives in New York, however, he turns out not to be the man his letters painted him to be, and he absconds with Esther’s savings, frittering it away on whores and liquor. Deeply wounded by the betrayal, but somehow unbroken, Esther returns to the boarding house determined to use her gifted hands and her sewing machine to refashion her dreams and make them anew from the whole cloth of her life’s experiences.”
 
In addition to director Linda O’Day Young, the Raleigh Little Theatre creative team includes technical director Jim Zervas, scenic and lighting designer Rick Young, costume designer Vicki Olson and stage manager Scott Wray.
 
INTIMATE APPAREL had its world premiere at CENTERSTAGE in Baltimore, MD during that theater’s 2002-03 season. The Roundabout Theatre Company presentation of the show opened Off Broadway on April 8, 2004 at the Laura Pels Theatre, where it played through June 13, 2004.
 
The latter production of INTIMATE APPAREL won two 2003-2004 Obie Awards -- for Performance (Viola Davis as Esther) and set design (Derek McLane) -- plus the 2004 Audelco Award for Best Production of the Year, the 2004 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play, the 2004 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play, and the 2004 American Theatre Critics’/Steingberg New Play Award.
 
Brooklyn dramatist Lynn Nottage also won the Outer Critics Circle’s John Gassner Award for Best Playwright and the Audelco Award for Best Playwright, plus the 2004 PEN/Laura Pels Award for Drama.
 
In reviewing INTIMATE APPAREL for THE NEW YORK TIMES, Margo Jefferson wrote, “Ms. Nottage has chosen to write a drama in the popular sweeping style of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Intricate plotting guides (or flings) the heroine across the boundaries of class and caste, worlds connected by romance, greed, ambition. Everyone is as much social type as individual: the virtuous single woman who must make her way in the world; the handsome, untrustworthy man; the good-hearted unglamorous gentleman; the ‘fallen’ or decadent woman who means well by the heroine but is too selfish not to betray her.”
 
Jefferson added, “… Propriety battles transgression on all fronts; people never stop trying to make real life square with their fantasies or their duties. I savored the freshness of the milieu. Ms. Nottage has done so much good historical research, and in literary terms she has put the New Yorks of Edith Wharton, James Weldon Johnson and Abraham Cahan on one stage.”
 
Raleigh Little Theatre presents INTIMATE APPAREL Friday-Saturday, Sept. 7-8, at 8 p.m.; Sunday, Sept. 9, at 3 p.m.; Thursday-Saturday, Sept. 13-15 and 20-22, at 8 p.m.; and Sunday, Sept. 16 AND 23, at 3 p.m. in its Gaddy-Goodwin Teaching Theatre, 301 Pogue St., Raleigh, North Carolina. $18 ($15 students and seniors 62+), except all seats $10 Sept. 9th.. 919/821-3111 or etix. NOTE: All shows are wheelchair accessible, and assistive listening devices are available for all shows. RALEIGH LITTLE THEATRE: http://www.raleighlittletheatre.org/performances/07-08/intimateapparel.html. LYNN NOTTAGE: http://www.lynnnottage.com/about.html. INTIMATE APPAREL: http://www.lynnnottage.com/plays.html#intimate. STUDY GUIDE (courtesy Guthrie Theater of Minneapolis, MN): http://www.guthrietheater.org/sites/default/files/intimate_apparel.pdf.

WHAT: The TRIANGLE THEATER REVIEW is a FREE weekly e-mail theatrical newsletter, featuring previews and reviews by Robert W. McDowell and reviews by Alan R. Hall and others. (For brief bios of our critics, see the CVNC biographies page.) Classical Voice of North Carolina, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and this state's leading performing-arts platform, not only pays our reviewers but also makes continued publication of TTR possible. The online versions of our critics' theater reviews are now listed on the CVNC Reviews page. CVNC also publishes a comprehensive list of Triangle Theatre Openings and an extensive list of Theater and Film Links.

DONATIONS: If you value the comprehensive, in-depth local theater coverage that TTR and CVNC provide, please mail a check today to Classical Voice of North Carolina, 3305 Ruffin Street, Raleigh, NC 27607-4025; or use your credit card to donate online via PayPal. Because CVNC is a 501(c)(3) organization, all financial contributions are tax-deductible as allowed by law. Be sure to indicate that you want to support continued online publication of the TRIANGLE THEATER REVIEW. You may also donate to CVNC through the Triangle Community Foundation, based in Research Triangle Park. You can find current information about CVNC at Philanthropy Central, an online service operated by the Triangle Community Foundation.

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: E-mail RobertM748@aol.com and type SUBSCRIBE TTR in the Subject: line. TO UNSUBSCRIBE: E-mail RobertM748@aol.com and type UNSUBSCRIBE TTR in the Subject: line.

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? E-mail RobertM748@aol.com.

COPYRIGHT: Editorial content and all formats © 2007 CVNC and the respective authors. Reproduction in any form without authorization of Classical Voice of North Carolina and the respective authors is prohibited. CVNC will maintain an archive of standard previews and reviews from past issues for at least a year. To request copies of web articles from 2005 and earlier, e-mail cvnc1@earthlink.net.


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Intimate Apparel Preview

Raleigh Little Theatre Preview
By Robert W. McDowell, Triangle Theatre Review

“INTIMATE APPAREL” BY LYNN NOTTAGE CHRONICLES THE LIFE AND LOVES
OF AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN SEAMSTRESS, LIVING IN NEW YORK, CIRCA 1905

Raleigh Little Theatre will stage INTIMATE APPAREL, a prize-winning 2004 Off-Broadway hit by African-American playwright Lynn Nottage, on Sept. 7-9, 13-16, and 20-23 in its Gaddy-Goodwin Teaching Theatre. RLT youth theater and education director Linda O’Day Young will direct an all-star cast that includes Barbette Hunter as Esther, a black seamstress living in Lower Manhattan; LaDawna Akins as Mrs. Dickson, the bossy landlady of the respectable boardinghouse where Esther lives; Staci Sabarsky as Mrs. Van Buren, a socialite who lives on Fifth Avenue; Sharon Tazewell as Mayme, a prostitute and pianist in a local sporting house; Leon Sabarsky as Mr. Marks, an Orthodox Jewish fabric salesman; and Joseph Callender as George, Esther’s West Indian pen pal who wins her heart with his letters while he is working on the Panama Canal.
 
According to Dramatists Play Service, Inc.:
 
“The time is 1905, the place New York City, where Esther [played for RLT by Barbette Hunter], a black seamstress, lives in a boarding house for women and sews intimate apparel for clients who range from wealthy white patrons to prostitutes. Her skills and discretion are much in demand, and she has managed to stuff a goodly sum of money into her quilt over the years. One by one, the other denizens of the boarding house marry and move away, but Esther remains, lonely and longing for a husband and a future. Her plan is to find the right man and use the money she’s saved to open a beauty parlor where black women will be treated as royally as the white women she sews for. By way of a mutual acquaintance, she begins to receive beautiful letters from a lonesome Caribbean man named George [Joseph Callender] who is working on the Panama Canal. Being illiterate, Esther has one of her patrons respond to the letters, and over time the correspondence becomes increasingly intimate until George persuades her that they should marry, sight unseen. Meanwhile, Esther’s heart seems to lie with the Hasidic shopkeeper from whom she buys cloth [Leon Sabarsky as Mr. Marks], and his heart with her, but the impossibility of the match is obvious to them both, and Esther consents to marry George. When George, arrives in New York, however, he turns out not to be the man his letters painted him to be, and he absconds with Esther’s savings, frittering it away on whores and liquor. Deeply wounded by the betrayal, but somehow unbroken, Esther returns to the boarding house determined to use her gifted hands and her sewing machine to refashion her dreams and make them anew from the whole cloth of her life’s experiences.”
 
In addition to director Linda O’Day Young, the Raleigh Little Theatre creative team includes technical director Jim Zervas, scenic and lighting designer Rick Young, costume designer Vicki Olson and stage manager Scott Wray.
 
INTIMATE APPAREL had its world premiere at CENTERSTAGE in Baltimore, MD during that theater’s 2002-03 season. The Roundabout Theatre Company presentation of the show opened Off Broadway on April 8, 2004 at the Laura Pels Theatre, where it played through June 13, 2004.
 
The latter production of INTIMATE APPAREL won two 2003-2004 Obie Awards -- for Performance (Viola Davis as Esther) and set design (Derek McLane) -- plus the 2004 Audelco Award for Best Production of the Year, the 2004 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play, the 2004 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play, and the 2004 American Theatre Critics’/Steingberg New Play Award.
 
Brooklyn dramatist Lynn Nottage also won the Outer Critics Circle’s John Gassner Award for Best Playwright and the Audelco Award for Best Playwright, plus the 2004 PEN/Laura Pels Award for Drama.
 
In reviewing INTIMATE APPAREL for THE NEW YORK TIMES, Margo Jefferson wrote, “Ms. Nottage has chosen to write a drama in the popular sweeping style of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Intricate plotting guides (or flings) the heroine across the boundaries of class and caste, worlds connected by romance, greed, ambition. Everyone is as much social type as individual: the virtuous single woman who must make her way in the world; the handsome, untrustworthy man; the good-hearted unglamorous gentleman; the ‘fallen’ or decadent woman who means well by the heroine but is too selfish not to betray her.”
 
Jefferson added, “… Propriety battles transgression on all fronts; people never stop trying to make real life square with their fantasies or their duties. I savored the freshness of the milieu. Ms. Nottage has done so much good historical research, and in literary terms she has put the New Yorks of Edith Wharton, James Weldon Johnson and Abraham Cahan on one stage.”
 
Raleigh Little Theatre presents INTIMATE APPAREL Friday-Saturday, Sept. 7-8, at 8 p.m.; Sunday, Sept. 9, at 3 p.m.; Thursday-Saturday, Sept. 13-15 and 20-22, at 8 p.m.; and Sunday, Sept. 16 AND 23, at 3 p.m. in its Gaddy-Goodwin Teaching Theatre, 301 Pogue St., Raleigh, North Carolina. $18 ($15 students and seniors 62+), except all seats $10 Sept. 9th.. 919/821-3111 or etix. NOTE: All shows are wheelchair accessible, and assistive listening devices are available for all shows. RALEIGH LITTLE THEATRE: http://www.raleighlittletheatre.org/performances/07-08/intimateapparel.html. LYNN NOTTAGE: http://www.lynnnottage.com/about.html. INTIMATE APPAREL: http://www.lynnnottage.com/plays.html#intimate. STUDY GUIDE (courtesy Guthrie Theater of Minneapolis, MN): http://www.guthrietheater.org/sites/default/files/intimate_apparel.pdf.

WHAT: The TRIANGLE THEATER REVIEW is a FREE weekly e-mail theatrical newsletter, featuring previews and reviews by Robert W. McDowell and reviews by Alan R. Hall and others. (For brief bios of our critics, see the CVNC biographies page.) Classical Voice of North Carolina, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and this state's leading performing-arts platform, not only pays our reviewers but also makes continued publication of TTR possible. The online versions of our critics' theater reviews are now listed on the CVNC Reviews page. CVNC also publishes a comprehensive list of Triangle Theatre Openings and an extensive list of Theater and Film Links.

DONATIONS: If you value the comprehensive, in-depth local theater coverage that TTR and CVNC provide, please mail a check today to Classical Voice of North Carolina, 3305 Ruffin Street, Raleigh, NC 27607-4025; or use your credit card to donate online via PayPal. Because CVNC is a 501(c)(3) organization, all financial contributions are tax-deductible as allowed by law. Be sure to indicate that you want to support continued online publication of the TRIANGLE THEATER REVIEW. You may also donate to CVNC through the Triangle Community Foundation, based in Research Triangle Park. You can find current information about CVNC at Philanthropy Central, an online service operated by the Triangle Community Foundation.

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: E-mail RobertM748@aol.com and type SUBSCRIBE TTR in the Subject: line. TO UNSUBSCRIBE: E-mail RobertM748@aol.com and type UNSUBSCRIBE TTR in the Subject: line.

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? E-mail RobertM748@aol.com.

COPYRIGHT: Editorial content and all formats © 2007 CVNC and the respective authors. Reproduction in any form without authorization of Classical Voice of North Carolina and the respective authors is prohibited. CVNC will maintain an archive of standard previews and reviews from past issues for at least a year. To request copies of web articles from 2005 and earlier, e-mail cvnc1@earthlink.net.

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