In Ricky Ian Gordon—again—and Lynn Nottage’s powerful new opera “Intimate Apparel,” after her play of the same name, commanding soprano Kearstin Piper Brown delivers a tour-de-force in the central role of Esther Mills, whose relationships with women seem supportive but grow increasingly awkward, while those with men begin awkwardly and become impossible, in different ways. “Intimate Apparel,” a collaboration between Lincoln Center Theater and the Metropolitan Opera is playing at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. It opened on January 31 and runs through March 6.
In early 20th century New York City, Esther, up from the south, and George Armstrong, helping to dig the Panama Canal, begin a long-distance relationship, writing to each other in their own words—maybe.
The other women—Krysty Swann as Mayme, who works in a bawdy house and notably sings a raucous paean to opium and a honeyed one about a married man she calls her “Songbird;” Naomi Louisa O’Connell, as Mrs. Evangeline Van Buren, a bored and frustrated rich woman, who gives Esther work as her seamstress, but wants more; and Adrienne Danrich, as Esther’s landlady Mrs. Dickson, helpfully write the letters to George for Esther—but wind up asking the more or less impossible of her.
As for the men, when Esther and George (eloquent baritone Justin Austin) actually meet and marry, neither is what the other expected or is prepared to deal realistically with, and Mr. Marks (formidable tenor Arnold Livingston Geis), the Orthodox Jewish fabric salesman, affianced to an intended Rumanian bride he’s never met—well, you’d have to be a dyed-in-the-wool romantic to think that the pairing of an unhappily married black woman and a religious white Jew would succeed here in 1905.
Brown makes a meal of her soaring solos, as she goes from shy, wholesome, and dreamy, to downtrodden and devastated, to defiant. Rousing ensembles in the first act depict a wedding in Mrs. Dickson’s house and a lively Orchard Street marketplace. Conductor Steven Osgood presides over the orchestra, which makes so much fine music that one readily forgets that it consists of just two pianos, played by Nathaniel LaNasa and Brent Funderburk.
With such an expressive cast at his disposal, director Bartlett Sher is hardly limited by Michael Yeargan’s physical production, lit by Jennifer Tipton and made up of little more than a few set pieces, such as a bed, with covers that change according to circumstances and ownership, and the busy sewing machine, and a turntable, which keeps the focus and location of the action moving cinematically.
Catherine Zuber’s costumes are as flashy or down-to-earth as they need to be., from wedding finery, to low-dive trashy, to all black for the Chasids. Keep your eye on the skimpy red showgirl regalia and how it morphs from the bait for other women’s husbands to something to seduce one’s own husband in, and the brown smoking jacket, made lovingly as a gift for a husband, passed along to a mistress, repossessed by its maker, and given affectionately to another man.
Congratulations to Ricky Ian for having “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” downtown and “Intimate Apparel” uptown running simultaneously.