It is interesting isn’t it how different productions of the same play can be?  I saw Lynne Nottage’s Intimate Apparel in 2014 at the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park and looked forward to seeing it again.  What I remembered most was the sadly impossible relationship between an African American seamstress Esther and an orthodox Jewish draper Mr Marks.  Curiously I found the emphasis very different in Lynette Linton’s current production for the Donmar Warehouse. 

The setting is New York in 1905 where 35 year old Esther (Samira Wiley) has a useful trade, making elaborate bodice/basques for the very rich and for the other tenants of the boarding house where she lives.  There are three African American women in this play, Esther, Mrs Dickson (Nicola Hughes) the use of her surname showing her status, who is the landlady of the boarding house and a prostitute called Mayme (Faith Omole) who also lives there.  A customer, a white woman Mrs Van Buren (Claudia Jolly) orders these wonderful corsets but has an unhappy marriage to a rich man.

Esther has worked hard over the years and is saving up to start a beauty parlour.  At 35 she has pretty much given up any idea of marrying.  A letter is sent to her through a mutual acquaintance from George Armstrong, a labourer from Barbados who is working on the construction of the Panama Canal.  Now Esther cannot read or write but she tells Mrs Van Buren about the letter who reads it for her and who will help Esther reply.