Fabric of a life woven into ‘Apparel’

Esther is a proud but solitary seamstress in 1905 Manhattan. Working out of her room in a boarding house for 18 years, she has carved out a specialty in the making of magnificent corsets -- “intimate apparel.” She doesn’t wear her own creations. Their status as tools of seduction is of little interest to her. She’s on greater terms of intimacy with the sensuous fabrics than she is with other human beings. At age 35, however, Esther is beginning to yearn for something more, for a man and marriage, and also for her own beauty parlor.

Lynn Nottage’s play “Intimate Apparel” is an involving story about Esther’s quest for a new life, as richly detailed as one of Esther’s corsets. Its premiere production, now at South Coast Repertory after an initial engagement at Baltimore’s Center Stage, could use a few alterations but it’s already a thing of beauty.

In the first scene, Esther (Shane Williams) receives a letter from a total stranger, George (Kevin Jackson). He’s from Barbados, but he’s working in Panama, helping dig the new canal that will eventually connect two oceans. He has heard about Esther from her cousin, a fellow laborer.

Esther, an ex-slave’s daughter who came to New York from North Carolina when she was 17, doesn’t read or write. But she’s intrigued by the idea of an international correspondence with a man, and she has friends who can help.

Mrs. Van Buren (Sue Cremin) is one of Esther’s best customers, a Fifth Avenue socialite whose childless marriage is a gilded cage. On the opposite end of the New York social spectrum is another of Esther’s clients, Mayme (Erica Gimpel), who lives and works at a Tenderloin whorehouse, despite a proper family background and classical piano training.

These two women, intrigued by the romance of Esther’s long-distance courtship, pitch in to read George’s letters for her and help compose her replies. After months of letters, George declares his love and proposes marriage. Esther begins to make her own wedding gown.

No, they do not live happily ever after. If George’s letters, which Jackson delivers directly to the audience, sound remarkably eloquent for a ditch digger, there is a reason for it. Likewise, Esther has neglected to tell George of her own illiteracy.

Esther’s landlady (Brenda Pressley) has warned her that sugary words can deceive. Sure enough, the newlyweds both feel misled and, even worse, discover that they have very little to say to one another.

When Nottage’s “Crumbs From the Table of Joy” was produced at South Coast in 1996, it was criticized for overly fancy language. In “Intimate Apparel,” some of the words in George’s letters (we don’t hear as much from Esther’s) also burst with flowery lyricism, but those words are later revealed to be hollow, as if Nottage herself had learned something from her experience with “Crumbs.” Nottage has created one additional character, who stands in fascinating contrast to George. Mr. Marks (Steven Goldstein) is a fabric dealer who shares Esther’s obsessions with the qualities of cloth, even though his own brand of Judaism prevents him from wearing any color other than black. The scenes between Esther and Mr. Marks vibrate with unspoken feelings.

Like Esther and Mr. Marks, Kate Whoriskey’s staging takes delight in the textures of fabrics. Billowy clouds of cloth and tailor’s manikins overhang Walt Spangler’s set, which speedily encompasses all of the locales without mobile set pieces. Costume designer Catherine Zuber’s corsets and gowns are worth all the attention they get.

As Esther, who is supposedly plain, Williams looks too elegantly featured, almost as if she could earn a living modeling Esther’s creations as well as making them. Her initial demeanor lacks the necessary severity. Her performance becomes more convincing by the second act, but she isn’t helped by one awkward piece of Whoriskey’s staging, involving a pile of cash, that raises unnecessary logistical questions in the audience’s mind about why Esther doesn’t take the money and run.

Jackson is full of Caribbean charm in the first act but sinks into tangible desperation and despair when New York doesn’t work out as planned. The other performances are all first-rate.

Esther’s story resonates nearly a century later, when many more women find themselves unmarried at 35. Nottage’s excursion into Esther’s milieu is an absorbing emotional adventure.

*

‘Intimate Apparel’

Where: South Coast Repertory, Segerstrom Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, Sundays, 2:30 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.

Ends: May 18

Price: $27 to $54

Contact: (714) 708-5555

Running Time: 2 hours, 20 minutes

Shane Williams...Esther

Kevin Jackson...George Armstrong

Sue Cremin...Mrs. Van Buren

Erica Gimpel...Mayme

Brenda Pressley...Mrs. Dickson

Steven Goldstein...Mr. Marks

By Lynn Nottage. Directed by Kate Whoriskey. Sets by Walt Spangler. Costumes by Catherine Zuber. Lighting by Scott Zielinski. Original music by Reginald Robinson. Arrangements by William Foster McDaniel. Sound by Lindsay Jones. Production stage manager Randall K. Lum.