The tenants of Mrs. Dickson's boarding house for Colored Women may not be precisely destitute—most are employed, receive regular (if meager) income and many are pursuing specific goals, whether it be marriage, fame or independent prosperity—but this is 1905 and we are in New York City's Lower Manhattan district, where, as the widowed landlady observes, life is hard for immigrants who toil in solitary squalor far from home and kin. Indeed, loneliness will prove the undoing of every woman and man we meet —pilgrims who will risk all for love, only to be left with nothing to show for their devotion.
The personnel in Lynn Nottage's 2005 Intimate Apparel could easily be reduced to romantic-opera archetypes—the spinster dressmaker, the gilded-cage wife, the ragtime-girl pianist—but Tasia A. Jones's direction slows the pace and softens the volume of her cast's delivery to render the tone of this bittersweet fable quiet and contemplative, its misfortunes arising not from villainy, but out of a sadness and despair shared by the perpetrators as much as their victims. This delicate approach has the effect of sensitizing us to the subtlest of words and gestures—a lingerie seamstress and dry-goods vendor whose emotions remain unspoken simultaneously stroking a length of silk fabric, for example—so that the brief moments of hope Nottage grants them allow us to go home anticipating a brighter future.
Scott Penner's ivory-and-sepia-hued scenic design probably was intended to mimic the vintage photographs alleged to have inspired the author, but instead emerges as visually effacing as unbleached muslin, as does an annoyingly modern piano, though Raquel Adorno's costumes (Adorno was just named recipient of the 2022 Michael Merritt award BTW) and Jeffrey Levin's score of period melodies evoke the perfect atmosphere of bittersweet nostalgia. Overall, Northlight's long-overdue production might be missing the snap and fire of Relentless, currently playing at the Goodman, but Mildred Marie Langford's portrayal of the couturiére, whose sewing machine and ambitious determination ensures her an upwardly-mobile livelihood, is worth making the journey to the suburbs.
