THEATRE REVIEW:
KPBS AIRDATE: March 24, 2006
Small stitches; big, operatic emotions. A
heart-breaking life in the past; a frightening conception of the future. Two
dramatic productions that, as a thinking person, you dare not miss: “Intimate
Apparel” and “The Twilight of the Golds.”
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2004,
“Intimate Apparel” is currently the most produced play in the country. It’s
another of playwright Lynn Nottage’s dramatic attempts to burrow into the dark,
forgotten corners of black history. Inspired by a few old photos, one
beautifully re-created in the final moments of the stunning San Diego Repertory
Theatre production, Nottage created Esther Mills, a turn-of-the-20th-century
seamstress who sews glamorous undergarments for wealthier New York women, black
and white. She’s good-hearted but lonely, 35 years old and single, still
waiting for a good man to come along. Though she’s illiterate, she starts up a
correspondence by proxy, with a lusty Barbados worker on the Panama Canal. The
postal relationship turns into a marriage proposal, and the first act ends in a
hopeful matrimonial photographic pose. But you know things are gonna go South
from there, and they do, in a gut-wrenching way. Gifted director Delicia Turner Sonnenberg
brings depth, nuance and subtlety to the script, with rock-solid, understated
Lisa Renee Pitts anchoring the piece as the practical but romantic Esther. An
outstanding ensemble swirls around her in Fred Kinney’s marvelous, split-level
set, each carving out a credible character that helps define the boundaries of
class, color, friendship, trust and love. The lighting and costumes are superb
and the story may just make you weep.
The past gives way to the future, and the future
isn’t so far off in “The Twilight of the Golds.” When Jonathan Tolins wrote and
set the play in 1993, and when I first saw it here that year, and again in
1996, I thought it was provocatively futuristic. Now, it seems we’re a
heartbeat away from the being able to know that an unborn child is going to be homosexual.
That’s the quandary Suzanne Gold-Stein and her genetics researcher husband are
catapulted into. The news unnerves everyone, especially her brother, who’s gay.
David Gold, the funny/sarcastic/melodramatic opera queen, feels that
terminating this pregnancy would be like erasing his life. To David, the
traumatic dissolution of his neurotic New York Jewish family parallels “The
Twilight of the Gods,” the final opera in Wagner’s “Ring Cycle,” where the fate
of the world is decided. At Diversionary Theatre, under the assured direction
of Rosina Reynolds, all the humor, drama and pathos of the play are
underscored. Especially delectable is the palpable sibling bond between
endearing Matthew Weeden and adorable Amanda Sitton.
These productions make you question your own
thinking about the limits of science, acceptance and love.
©2006 Patté Productions
Inc.