Playwright Lynn Nottage has two Pulitzer Prizes to her credit (Ruined and Sweat), but Esther Mills of Intimate Apparel is arguably her most memorable character.
Esther is a seamstress who makes delicate lingerie, corsets and other intimate apparel for clients ranging from Mayme (Krystal Mosley), a black prostitute, to Mrs. Van Buren (Gracie Winchester), a white society matron who lives on Fifth Avenue. With no lack of irony, Esther notes that the hooker yearns to dress like the uptown socialite while the woman of means wants to don the garb of the sex worker.
Nottage’s plays in general, and particularly Intimate Apparel, are extremely popular in regional theaters across the country. Palm Beach Dramaworks has had the play on its production radar for the past two years, thwarted chiefly by COVID complications. But the stars now align to allow an exemplary production, directed by Orlando-based professor Be Boyd, featuring a charismatic central performance by Rita Cole as Esther and a handful of veteran Equity actors who form an impressive ensemble.
Esther has no social life to speak of, except for Sunday, which she devotes to churchgoing. Otherwise, she spends her time in her attic apartment of a Lower Manhattan boarding house, circa 1905, stitching away and saving up her money in a patchwork quilt, dreaming an unlikely dream of owning and running a beauty parlor.
The play proceeds in a series of duets, two-character scenes between Esther and the few people in her life – her clients, her landlady and, curiously, an Orthodox Jewish fabric salesman (Jordan Sobel) for whom she develops romantic feelings.
Of course, for a time more than 100 years ago, such a match would be unthinkable, And at the age of 35, Esther – no great beauty – feels that her chances of marriage are rapidly dwindling. So when she suddenly receives a letter from a George Armstrong (Jovon Jacobs), a black Bahamian laborer working on the digging of the Panama Canal, she welcomes his attention as if it were her last chance at happiness.
Esther, a character based on Nottage’s great-grandmother, is unable to read or write. So she enlists the aid of Mrs. Van Buren to read George’s letters and respond to them. The formerly married Van Buren has a secret yearning of her own. And when George eventually proposes marriage to Esther before ever meeting her, he makes his way to New York, but is hardly the man he presented himself as.
Much of the second act concerns itself with Esther’s relationship with George. They do marry and the virginal Esther spends an awkward wedding night trying to avoid consummation. But consummate it they do and they settle into a brief period of happiness together before George takes to excessive drink, gambling and whoring.
Throughout all the heartbreak that Esther endures, she remains stoic, and Cole projects a powerful determination to live her life without knowing love. The actress sets her jaw and keeps her attention on her work, a portrait of emotional reserve that draws audience empathy.
Costuming plays a large part in the play and designer Brian O’Keefe comes up with richly detailed period clothes that define social strata, as well as Esther’s delicate creations. Kirk Bookman (doing double duty between Dramaworks and the Maltz Jupiter) lights the stage areas of Micharl Amico’s locale fragments, allowing for fluid movement among the many venue changes.
At over two-and-a-half hours, Intimate Apparel feels long and it doesn’t so much resolve itself as simply end. But theatergoers who invest the time and energy will be rewarded for their encounter with Esther Mills.
INTIMATE APPAREL, Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach. Through Sunday, April 17. $79. Call 561-514-4042 or visit www.palmbeachdramaworks.org.