By Liz Carman
With Intimate Apparel, University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music continues to present work as good as any seen on local professional stages.
Intimate Apparel Strips Away Exteriors
Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel takes us into the private spaces of New York City in the early years of the twentieth century. In a boarding house bedroom, a socialite’s boudoir, a brothel, a merchant’s stockroom, it breathes rich texture into little intimacies shared across the lines of race, class, gender, and nationality.
Esther is a seamstress specializing in lingerie. Even as her clients (women ranging from society’s upper echelon to saloon sex workers) carry Esther’s handiwork into the most vulnerable and private moments of their lives, Esther herself lives a chaste life as a thirty-something spinster.
When a letter arrives introducing George, a laborer on the Panama Canal, a romance slowly grows over correspondence. Esther allows herself to dream of the intimacies she induces for others but has always denied herself. However, when George physically arrives on the scene, the realities of the man stand in stark contrast with the picture painted by his flowery love letters.
Thoughtful, Detailed Design Builds a Clear World …
Intimate Apparel is in CCM’s Cohen Family Studio Theatre. Using an architectural two-story set by student Josie Heys, each of the story’s locations inhabit its own distinct scenic space. It’s a savvy use of the stage, and the tight footprint of each locale feels by turns intimate and claustrophobic as characters are pulled toward or repulsed from one another. Ella Rosoff’s lighting design deftly underpins these energetic shifts.
Celeste Jackson-Moody’s costumes are breathtaking to look at and do so much storytelling on their own as characters’ fortunes rise and fall. Esther’s creations–the intimate apparel of the play’s title–become gemlike little luxuries under Ms. Jackson-Moody’s design. One understands perfectly how such divine pieces can drive our story forward.
… And the Performances Yank Us Into It
Director Torie Wiggins has a real gift for making her actors shine, and all six members of this cast commanded rapt attention. Ryan Miller, as Esther’s suitor George, executes with astonishing precision the man’s hairpin turn from sweet cinnamon-roll writer of love letters to something much darker. The revulsion I felt at George’s Act Two behavior truly stings. I, like Esther, had been lured into trust by the gentleness Mr. Miller plays in Act One. Miranda Myers is Mayme, Esther’s sex worker client, with palpable fire and frustration as she is defiant and desperate by turns.
Mr. Marks, the Jewish immigrant fabric merchant who supplies Esther’s business, is alight with conflicting desires for his divine and secular callings, and Adrian Graff fills his moments onstage with intelligence and yearning that I felt so keenly that it made me nearly gnaw through my purse strap in shared feeling. Blueblood Mrs. Van Buren (Annika Kallstrom) is tempest-tossed by a very different set of longings, and Ms. Kallstrom positively vibrates with the character’s pent-up frustration. You feel terrible for Mrs. Van Buren, even when you don’t like her much. Dylann Williams-Sanford plays the motherly Mrs. Dickson, Esther’s landlady and the only person in here with any real sense, with a calm that grounds the play’s energy but never lets it drag.
Leading Lady Shines
Kathuure Mitiri, as Esther, deserves a paragraph and possibly a whole review of her own, shining with a radiant light at the center of the play. She’s so magnetic you understand why everyone around Esther is clawing so desperately to get closer to her. That quality also pulled my attention unreservedly into the world of the play. She’s the rare performer who’s transparent as water; you see everything she thinks and feels onstage without it ever feeling stagey or presentational.
Only Four Performances
Like all of CCM’s productions, Intimate Apparel has a regrettably brief life. It closes Saturday October 3, 2026 on a two-show day. If you can get in to see it, it’s entirely worth the trip to UC’s campus. Here is the link for tickets. Check out upcoming events at CCM while you are on the link.
