by Lynn Nottage
Directed by Philip Akin
A Canadian Stage Company Production
at the Bluma Appel
February 8-March 6, 2010

   Philip Akin’s production has a good set and costume design by Tamara Marie Kucheran, with the set becoming a clever emblem of the play as a quilt of American social history. The clothing line in the background links to the quilted bedcover, and the quilt itself (a thing of variously coloured and textured patches) is an emblem of a play that cuts and pastes different ethnicities, classes, dreams, and frustrations. Fifth Avenue meets the Tenderloin in this story, and white and black mingle somewhat uneasily at times. The production also has an efficient sound design by Todd Charlton, and lighting by Renee Brode that is generally good, except for the sequences of epistolary exchange between 35-year old Esther, a hardworking, virginal, homely black seamstress, and her mysterious West Indian suitor George, who is hidden behind mosquito netting (he is in the Panama, after all) and can be seen only from the waist down. Perhaps the director’s intent is to keep him swaddled in mystery until he gets to New York after an epistolary wooing of Esther who has dreams of one day running her own black beauty parlour in Harlem. But surely the point of the exchange between George and Esther is sensuous romanticism, a lie of the mind, so to speak, in more ways than one. Esther’s economic situation is dire, but she has an artist’s imagination and skill as she turns out beautiful undergarments for Mrs. Van Buren, wealthy but unhappy socialite, who becomes her trusted confidante and who, when under the influence of booze, yearns for her sexual intimacy. Esther has lived for 18 years in the Lower Manhattan boarding house owned by black and encouraging Mrs. Dickson, and she yearns for a decent man. Of course, George turns out to be an utter scoundrel because he is cruelly exploitative and untrustworthy. He takes advantage of all-too-trusting Esther who is really illiterate and who has had her letters to George composed and written by eagerly conspiratorial Mrs. Van Buren, rather reminiscent of the trick in Cyrano de Bergerac. But there could easily be an ironic contrast between the George in Panama and the one who turns up at the boarding house where Esther lives and works conscientiously. This lapse in directorial discretion is only a small point; there are other bigger flaws that make this production seem as if some of the cast were less than happily suited to their roles. In fact—to steal a metaphor from Shakespeare—they sometimes seem to be wearing borrowed clothes that don’t quite fit them.

   Lynn Nottage’s play has a period flavour, being set in Manhattan of the 1950s and showing its author’s historical research, and it has, as well, an old-fashioned sense of structure and characterization. It sometimes feels like Edith Wharton refracted through James Weldon Johnson as it creates a portrait of a black woman at the mercy of racial, sexist, and economic forces. Of course, it uses conventional types (heroic common woman; gentleman-scoundrel; his decent foil in the figure of another outsider—the orthodox Jewish fabric merchant; the unhappy upper-class woman; the tart whose goodness is compromised by her own needs), though it doesn’t make the error of robbing these types of individuality. Coincidences do figure in the drama, but these add texture to the patterned contrasts and contests between fiction and reality, dreams and duties. No character ever gets the love he or she yearns after, and there should be an aching vulnerability in each dreamer. Akin’s cast, however, generally goes in for what I consider to be safe, tepid acting or safe, generic acting, with one notable exception. Marium Carvell is a dignified Mrs. Dickson, but not much else. Lisa Berry plays only the externals of the black, ragtime piano-playing tart Mayme. Carly Street’s Mrs. Van Buren, naughtily dressed or semi-dressed and woozy with booze, is more of a cliché than a flesh and blood character, and Kevin Hanchard’s disgruntled George, though controlled, lacks a romantic aura even though he speaks in a Caribbean lilt. As Esther, Raven Dauda is rather disappointing. She suggests the character’s dignity and hurt, her joy and her suffering. She is good at the character’s shyness and comic stiffness on her wedding night, but her bug-eyed, nervous tilt is overdone, and the big dramatic moments (except with George) have little weight and density. She is best in her tender little scenes with Alex Poch-Goldin’s gently yearning Mr. Marks because he gives her so much to work with as they handle various colourful fabrics in a sort of delicate romance where the touch and feel of fabric correlate to the characters’ gradually deepening emotional feeling for each other.  

   Philip Akin has directed rather mechanically, so the first act seems far too long. To his credit, however, the story does get told rather clearly. What is missing is the dark root of the pain in the characters, and without this pain, the play feels quaint rather than acute, semi-intimate rather than deeply complex. The outer dressing is fine; it is the inner life that is deficient.

photos: David Hou

pic 1: Raven Dauda as Esther

pic 2: Carly Stret (Mrs. Van Buren), Raven Dauda (Esther)

pic 3: Raven Dauda (Esther), Alex Poch-Goldin (Mr. Marks)




 

Go Back to: Stage Reviews