(seen at the afternoon performance on 5th July 2025)
The Donmar and Lynn Nottage seem made for each other. This 2003 play is the third staged here in as many years, following the success of her later works “Sweat” and “Floyd’s.” Oddly, in many ways this is fresher and cleverer than either.
Again looking at the ordinary people who work in America’s service industries, this time we are in 1905, where a few highly skilled Black women could achieve respectability and financial stability creating “intimate apparel” for the white upper echelons.
Samira Wiley is Esther, one such talented seamstress. Illiterate yet with more resilience than a professor, in the first half we follow her epistolary relationship, leading to Panama Canal labourer George (Kadiff Kirwan, terrifyingly brutal beneath a softer veneer) entering her life for real.
Wiley engages us from the start and her compassion never fails to impress. Her kindness towards friend and sex worker Mayme (Faith Omole – excelling even her own usual high standard, mixing vulnerable bitterness with deep courage) survives despite an horrific realisation for both.
Prized customer Mrs Dickson (Nicola Hughes) is allowed to reciprocate Esther’s attentions as far as society allows, and Hughes finds grace in portraying the difficult social stratification of the era, where a visit with a Black person to the opera would cause a scandal.
Likewise, Alex Waldmann as Mr Marks deals with his own crush on Esther with strongly played conviction. Their interests and life approach align; faith and obligation do not. It is a toxic mixture and the punjancy adds much to the piece.
Under Jai Morjaria’s inspired soft oil lamp lighting, Nottage first shows us the bigger picture – the triumphs of US early 20th century industrialisation and the wealth it brings the upper levels of society. We gain a hint of the themes which go on to influence her later works.
The use of “middlemen” – represented by those who write letters for others, creating lives which are not all they seem – then reminds us that ‘prosperity for all’ is an indirect message.
Reaching the sharp point of the inverted wealth pyramid of society, we finally reach Esther and George, allowing us to examine the effect on individuals at the lowest, dependent level. Contrasting them with the self-employed Black boarding house operator Dickson and first-generation independent migrant Marks further balances and broaden her exploration to impressive effect.
The twists are perhaps not original in literary terms, but are as beautifully woven as the materials Mr Marks sells. When held to the light, Nottage exposes hard-woven patterns courtesy of efforts unacknowledged and unrewarded for the craftspeople involved. The broader point cleverly made, she goes on to unleash personal pain also; the audience asphyxiating as we inhale simultaneously in sympathy with our beloved heroine.
If director Lynette Linton perhaps allows a little too much curious indulgence – the music sequence, and the slight shapelessness of the second act’s marriage scenes – she overcomes them building towards an ending that is human, downbeat and perfect.
We only wish Esther strength and swift rewards, as richly deserved as the outfits she creates, love, detail and care in every stitch. A record of an ignored period of history, faded as the snapshot which inspired it now exists, deserving our attention and contemplation.
