Chioma Anyanwu in Intimate Apparel (Brandon Parigo)
At first glance, Intimate Apparel may present itself as a simple, slow-paced profile of one woman’s quiet life. But Lynn Nottage’s 2004 drama, now onstage at Kansas City Actors Theatre, is bursting at the seams with quiet tensions, offering a rumination on the limitations that shape our lives—those we encounter in the world and those we place on ourselves.
Intimate Apparel centers on Esther (Chioma Anyanwu), a Black seamstress living in New York City in 1905. Esther is 35 and unmarried, and as she repeatedly tells us, fairly plain. She has not necessarily given up on finding love, but she refuses to settle for anything less than it, and ignores the rare lackluster potential suitor who might look her way. Instead, she focuses on her work: making intricate undergarments for the women of New York.
Esther’s work is exquisite. She is a true talent with a deep appreciation for the artistry involved in crafting fine fabrics. That appreciation is the basis of a bond between the seamstress and a fabric salesman and Romanian Orthodox Jew named Mr. Marks (Joe Serrano). The connection between these two is nearly entirely unspoken, and comes out almost entirely in the lack of contact between them, in the genuineness of their smiles and the slight dropping of formalities.
At the same time, Esther receives a letter out of the blue from a man she does not know. George (David Sadzin) is a Barbadian immigrant living in Panama, one of the thousands of men who came to dig the Panama Canal. He heard about Esther from an old acquaintance from her church, he writes, and he’d like someone to think about while he labors in this unfamiliar place. So he asks her to start a correspondence. Esther is guarded but flattered and intrigued. She doesn’t know how to read or write, so she reluctantly enlists the help of one of her regular customers, Mrs. Van Buren (Allison F. Rich).
Esther’s clientele sit at two extremes of the social spectrum. Mrs. Van Buren is a well-off white woman who hopes Esther’s garments can garner a bit of affection from her neglectful husband. She longs for the freedom she imagines other women have—women like Mayme (Teonna Wesley), a Black sex worker who lives at the same boarding house where Esther has lived and worked since she was a teenager. Van Buren and Mayme both romanticize what they imagine the other has, and they both find a piece of that life in Esther’s work.
Anyanwu delivers a quiet powerhouse performance as Esther, all restraint and subtleties. The rest of the small cast, directed by Teresa Monique Leggard, is fantastic as well. Sadzin captures the full range of George’s character, from the romantic reciting love letters, cast in a dreamy hue (shout-out to Selena Gonzalez-Lopez’s dynamic lighting), to … well, to the man George ends up being. Serrano’s joyful Mr. Marks compliments Anyanwu’s Esther beautifully, and Wesley, Rich, and Lynn A. King as the owner of Esther’s boarding house, round out the entirety of Esther’s imperfect but caring support system.
For a show that hinges so heavily on the quality and impact of Esther’s “intimate apparel,” Whitney Manney’s costumes meet the challenge. The corsets are not overly ornate, but they look like they were made with great care, enough to make us care about them ourselves. When George tosses aside a gorgeous smoking jacket Esther has made, his carelessness over her work is devastating.
Intimate Apparel is a captivating work from one of America’s most-produced playwrights. The play radiates humanity, and the team at KCAT—always dedicated to artist-driven work that feels deeply personal—executes it beautifully.
“Intimate Apparel,” a production of Kansas City Actors Theatre, runs through August 23 at City Stage, on the lower level of Union Station, 30 W Pershing Rd, Kansas City, MO. For more information, visit www.kcactors.org.
