Usher Nonsense #43 – Intimate Apparel
INTIMATE APPAREL - by Lynn Nottage, Directed by Daniiel Sullivan (Sight
Unseen, Brooklyn Boy)at the Roundabout's Laura Pels Theatre (Formerly APT)
With: Viola Davis, Arija Bareikis, Lynda Gravátt, Russell Hornsby, Corey Stoll,
Lauren Velez
Sets - Derek McClane, Costumes - Catherine Zuber, Lights - Allen Lee Hughes
NEWFLASH! "Defeat Snatched from The Jaws of Victory!" You heard it here first.
First of all, will someone please write a comedy for Viola Davis? (And write one for
Dan Lauria while you're at it.) Davis has a comic streak that is just about to bust out
of her skin. It leaps out in one scene in this play where she has two shots of gin that
hit her so hard she makes the audience feel drunk. It also makes you realize that for
the rest of the play she, like the characters for whom she sews, is cinched in by a
script that gives them little breathing room.
This is the story of Esther, a single black woman living in a Manhattan rooming house
in the early 1900's. She sews for women on Park Avenue and women in brothels, but
she has no life or love of her own. Consequently, when a man working on the
Panama Canal writes to her through a mutual acquaintance, she soon falls into like,
and then into love, and then in to marriage, and then into bed. Her friends warn her
that she may be acting hastily, and tell her not to give up her dream of a beauty parlor
for colored women nor the money she has saved and sewn into the quillt that covers
her bed.
What a surprise! She gives up the dream and the money, and gives it to her man who
turns out to be shallow, frustrated, and a liar. Yawn. A black man who done his
woman wrong. Oh puh-leeze! When will we have had enough of this crap?
The REAL love story is the one about Esther and the Orthodox Jew, Mr. Marks, from
whom she buys cloth. They share a passion for silks, satins and gabardines that
make your thighs ache. They cannot be together because of religion. And they are
deeply, truly in love. What if they had crossed the line? How would it have turned
out? And why did this author veer away from this story to something tired and
stereotypical?
Who knows? She didn't. And the fine physical surroundings of set, costumes and
lights cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.
Here's a few inside usher tips for you - If you do go to this production, don't sit any
further back in the orchestra than row E. After that you cannot see the entire
proscenium because the balcony (which is only three rows) hangs down and blocks
your vision (like the Gershwin theatre). Whoever designed the Pels Theatre was
sitting in row E, dead center, when at the drawing board. The designer has also
created a maze for handicapped audience members that uses an elevator, ramps and
stairs in a combination so complicated that you have to wonder where the ADA
committee was when this was run up the flagpole. And finally - just try getting out of
the theatre at intermission without asking for directions from more than two people.
©2004 Tulis McCall
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