Latest news with #Nottage
Time Out
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Intimate Apparel
Change at the top can completely alter a theatre's character. But there is something quite lovely about the fact that the great US playwright Lynn Nottage and our own fast-rising directing superstar Lynette Linton have done a play together for each of the last three Donmar artistic directors. Josie Rourke's reign ended with the monumental working class tragedy Sweat, which did much to establish both Nottage and Linton's UK reputations. For Michael Longhurst there was Clyde's, Sweat 's beautifully redemptive, almost magical realist sort-of-sequel. Now Linton moves on to Intimate Apparel. Where Sweat and Clyde's were both UK premieres, Intimate Apparel is an older Nottage work that was her first US hit back in 2003 and had a very decent UK premiere a decade ago. But more Lynn Nottage is always a good thing. It's a period drama, following a selection of characters in New York City, 1905. The story centres on Esther (Samira Wiley), a hard working but shy and emotionally repressed Black seamstress who specialises in 'intimate apparel' – that is to say underwear, which in 1905 includes a lot of fancy corsets. Neither Nottage's play nor Linton's production really gives a sense of what the wider city – or indeed country – was like at the time, and that's the point. Each of Nottage's characters exists on some sort of margin, or we only see the marginal side of their existence. So there's Esther: shy, self-doubting but determined in her passion for her work. There's her friend Mayme (Faith Omole), a hooker. There's Esther's landlady and confidante Mrs Dickson (Nicola Hughes), who acquired her wealth somewhat dubiously. There's Mrs Van Buren (Claudia Jolly), the rich but lonely white lady who Esther makes clothes for and who confides in her but who will never treat her like a social equal. There's Mr Marks (Alex Waldmann), the orthodox Jewish clothier who Esther buys her fabric from: the two of them clearly have a thing for each other but are sundered by race and religion. And finally there's George (Kadiff Kirwan), a Bajan labourer on the Panama Canal who has taken to writing romantic letters to Esther, who is thrilled, although she herself cannot read. An exquisite drama about what happens when human longing is filtered through human society They're all transgressing in each others' spaces: they have intimate relationships more complicated than simple friendship. A lot of it is about touch: Mrs Van Buren, who is probably queer, trembles and gasps when Esther laces her corset and looks self conscious and embarrassed when she looks at her pale hand holding Esther's dark one. Mr Marks is discomfited when Esther grazes his hand – the only woman who is allowed to do so is his betrothed, who he has never met and lives in Romania. When George finally comes to NYC, Esther is torn between fear of and hunger for his touch. It's a beautifully acted and exquisitely written drama about what happens when raw human longing is filtered through the strangeness of class, race and rulebound human society. Yes, it's a period piece, but even today, an Orthodox Jew and a working class Black woman would have quite the gulf to surmount to form a public relationship. It's only in their one-on-one connections away from the public eye that their desires have a tiny measure of breathing space. US actor Wiley is excellent as Esther: shy and self-doubting but with an unshakeable core of passion and ambition. And I think Kirwan does a particularly fine job with the complicated role of George. When he finally arrives in NYC he is not all his letters suggested. And yet rather than make him out to be a simple cad, Kirwan and Nottage are very good at capturing his justifiable frustration at an American society that won't let him be the man he wants to be. Both Linton's direction and Alex Berry's design is light and unshowy – we get a sense of the period through costume and furniture, but we're never drowning in detail, and the characters are always put front and centre. Linton's only big intervention is a series of projections in which the Black characters are shown as figures in sepia photographs. 'Unknown negro seamstress, 1905' reads the caption to a final image of Esther. It's a blithe description that reduces a profoundly complicated life to almost nothing. But Nottage has shown us her boundless depths.
Hamilton Spectator
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
`This House' makes world premiere, exploring Black history through a family's legacy in Harlem
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Near the end of 'This House,' a heart-wrenching opera given its world premiere last weekend, the matriarch Ida poignantly intones messages to her family on stage and to the audience. 'History's the only thing to survive,' soprano Adrienne Danrich sings before adding: 'You may have left us, but we will never leave you.' A rumination on love, aspiration, coping and the unyielding weight of the past, the roughly two-hour work that opened Saturday night at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis mixes the living and ghosts ambiguously in a Harlem brownstone. Ricky Ian Gordon's lush score brings to vivid life a libretto by Lynn Nottage and her daughter Ruby Aiyo Gerber, weaving impacts of the Civil War, Great Migration, Black Power movement, AIDS crisis and gentrification. There are five more performances through June 29. 'I just wanted to be able to tell all of these really important moments in Black history,' Gerber said, 'but as they relate to one family up into the current moment, so that there is not this erasure as if the past was the past, which I think increasingly now, especially as we see more and more censorship of Black history, is kind of this pervasive narrative.' Writing began when Gerber was a college senior Now 27, Gerber started 'This House' as a play in 2020 during her senior year at Brown while the coronavirus pandemic unfolded. Her mother, the only woman to win a pair of Pulitzer Prizes for drama, for 'Ruined' and 'Sweat, ' suggested Gerber adapt it with her into an opera composed by Gordon, Nottage's partner on 'Intimate Apparel' at Lincoln Center Theater. Opera Theater of St. Louis commissioned 'This House' for its 50th anniversary festival season as its 45th world premiere. 'Equal parts a family drama, a ghost story and a meditation on inheritance and memory,' company general director Andrew Jorgensen said. Ideas were exchanged when Gordon, Nottage and Gerber met at a Providence, Rhode Island, hotel. Among the changes, an escapist duet the librettists centered around Barcelona was changed to Valencia so as not to be similar to Stephen Sondheim's 'Company.' 'Being a mother-daughter you can be so honest,' Gerber said, recalling her mom telling her of one flowery passage: 'That's corny and I don't think it works.' Nottage still lives in the Brooklyn parlor house where Gerber grew up. 'We have different muscles. I'm someone that comes from the playwriting world,' Nottage said. 'Ruby's comfort zone is really poetry and language. and so I thought that between the two of us, we could divide and conquer in some ways.' Opera is set in Harlem brownstone In the resulting story, a house at 336 Convent Ave. was bought in 1919 by Minus Walker, a sharecropper's son. Zoe, a present-day investment banker (soprano Briana Hunter), and husband Glenn (tenor Brad Bickhardt) mull whether to move back to the house and subdivide the property. Zoe's brother, poetic painter Lindon (baritone Justin Austin), doesn't want to leave the house. and his lover Thomas (bass-baritone Christian Pursell) suggests they travel to Spain. Hunter tapped into anxiety, fear, pain and grief to portray Zoe. 'She's an ambitious woman, and she has been through a lot of really horrible, traumatic events through her family,' Hunter said. 'I understand the desire to kind of escape that. She's kind of a classic case of you can't avoid things forever.' Eight of the 10 characters are Black. There's a love triangle, pregnancies and surprise deaths. The house itself sings in 12-tone chords. Ida's Uncle Percy (tenor Victor Ryan Robertson) is a numbers runner who jolts the first act with an aria 'Drink Up!' 'Sportin' Life on steroids,' Gordon said, referring to the dope dealer in 'The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.' 'We all are haunted by our past, and we all are haunted by our ghosts,' Gordon said. 'The question of living one's life is how does one reconcile the past and go on? How do you move into a future unbridled and free enough to be liberated and not imprisoned by the past?' Conductor has a penchant for contemporary works Daniela Candillari led her third world premiere in less than two years after Jeanine Tesori's 'Grounded' at the Washington National Opera and Rene Orth's '10 Days in a Madhouse' at Opera Philadelphia. Gordon originally envisioned the orchestra as chamber sized to hold down expenses, but Candillari pushed to add instruments. Conducting this is different from leading Verdi or Puccini. 'You can have two conductors read the score in a very different way,' she said. 'Having that direct source. a living composer who can tell you: This is what I heard and this is how I meant it and this is what this needs to be, that's incredibly invaluable.' Forty-eight players from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra were in the deep pit at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts, a venue with a thrust stage and difficult acoustics. James Robinson, the company's former artistic director, returned to direct the performances and is likely to bring the staging to Seattle Opera, where he became general and artistic director in September 2024. 'It is kind of a ghost story, and I think that's the most important thing, knowing that we're able to bounce back and forth between time periods efficiently,' he said. For Danrich, portraying Ida has a special resonance. She is a St. Louis native and is staying at a hotel three blocks from where she grew up. 'My cousins, my grandmother, my grandfather, me, my sisters, we all lived in that big old house and we called it the big house,' she said. 'I was like, yep, this is my house. I'm actually basing her movements and her mannerisms off of my mother.'
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
`This House' makes world premiere, exploring Black history through a family's legacy in Harlem
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Near the end of 'This House,' a heart-wrenching opera given its world premiere last weekend, the matriarch Ida poignantly intones messages to her family on stage and to the audience. 'History's the only thing to survive,' soprano Adrienne Danrich sings before adding: 'You may have left us, but we will never leave you.' A rumination on love, aspiration, coping and the unyielding weight of the past, the roughly two-hour work that opened Saturday night at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis mixes the living and ghosts ambiguously in a Harlem brownstone. Ricky Ian Gordon's lush score brings to vivid life a libretto by Lynn Nottage and her daughter Ruby Aiyo Gerber, weaving impacts of the Civil War, Great Migration, Black Power movement, AIDS crisis and gentrification. There are five more performances through June 29. 'I just wanted to be able to tell all of these really important moments in Black history,' Gerber said, 'but as they relate to one family up into the current moment, so that there is not this erasure as if the past was the past, which I think increasingly now, especially as we see more and more censorship of Black history, is kind of this pervasive narrative.' Writing began when Gerber was a college senior Now 27, Gerber started 'This House' as a play in 2020 during her senior year at Brown while the coronavirus pandemic unfolded. Her mother, the only woman to win a pair of Pulitzer Prizes for drama, for 'Ruined' and 'Sweat, ' suggested Gerber adapt it with her into an opera composed by Gordon, Nottage's partner on 'Intimate Apparel' at Lincoln Center Theater. Opera Theater of St. Louis commissioned 'This House' for its 50th anniversary festival season as its 45th world premiere. 'Equal parts a family drama, a ghost story and a meditation on inheritance and memory,' company general director Andrew Jorgensen said. Ideas were exchanged when Gordon, Nottage and Gerber met at a Providence, Rhode Island, hotel. Among the changes, an escapist duet the librettists centered around Barcelona was changed to Valencia so as not to be similar to Stephen Sondheim's 'Company.' 'Being a mother-daughter you can be so honest,' Gerber said, recalling her mom telling her of one flowery passage: 'That's corny and I don't think it works.' Nottage still lives in the Brooklyn parlor house where Gerber grew up. 'We have different muscles. I'm someone that comes from the playwriting world,' Nottage said. 'Ruby's comfort zone is really poetry and language. and so I thought that between the two of us, we could divide and conquer in some ways.' Opera is set in Harlem brownstone In the resulting story, a house at 336 Convent Ave. was bought in 1919 by Minus Walker, a sharecropper's son. Zoe, a present-day investment banker (soprano Briana Hunter), and husband Glenn (tenor Brad Bickhardt) mull whether to move back to the house and subdivide the property. Zoe's brother, poetic painter Lindon (baritone Justin Austin), doesn't want to leave the house. and his lover Thomas (bass-baritone Christian Pursell) suggests they travel to Spain. Hunter tapped into anxiety, fear, pain and grief to portray Zoe. 'She's an ambitious woman, and she has been through a lot of really horrible, traumatic events through her family,' Hunter said. 'I understand the desire to kind of escape that. She's kind of a classic case of you can't avoid things forever.' Eight of the 10 characters are Black. There's a love triangle, pregnancies and surprise deaths. The house itself sings in 12-tone chords. Ida's Uncle Percy (tenor Victor Ryan Robertson) is a numbers runner who jolts the first act with an aria 'Drink Up!' 'Sportin' Life on steroids,' Gordon said, referring to the dope dealer in 'The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.' 'We all are haunted by our past, and we all are haunted by our ghosts,' Gordon said. 'The question of living one's life is how does one reconcile the past and go on? How do you move into a future unbridled and free enough to be liberated and not imprisoned by the past?' Conductor has a penchant for contemporary works Daniela Candillari led her third world premiere in less than two years after Jeanine Tesori's 'Grounded' at the Washington National Opera and Rene Orth's '10 Days in a Madhouse' at Opera Philadelphia. Gordon originally envisioned the orchestra as chamber sized to hold down expenses, but Candillari pushed to add instruments. Conducting this is different from leading Verdi or Puccini. 'You can have two conductors read the score in a very different way,' she said. 'Having that direct source. a living composer who can tell you: This is what I heard and this is how I meant it and this is what this needs to be, that's incredibly invaluable.' Forty-eight players from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra were in the deep pit at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts, a venue with a thrust stage and difficult acoustics. James Robinson, the company's former artistic director, returned to direct the performances and is likely to bring the staging to Seattle Opera, where he became general and artistic director in September 2024. 'It is kind of a ghost story, and I think that's the most important thing, knowing that we're able to bounce back and forth between time periods efficiently,' he said. For Danrich, portraying Ida has a special resonance. She is a St. Louis native and is staying at a hotel three blocks from where she grew up. 'My cousins, my grandmother, my grandfather, me, my sisters, we all lived in that big old house and we called it the big house,' she said. 'I was like, yep, this is my house. I'm actually basing her movements and her mannerisms off of my mother.'
Winnipeg Free Press
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
`This House' makes world premiere, exploring Black history through a family's legacy in Harlem
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Near the end of 'This House,' a heart-wrenching opera given its world premiere last weekend, the matriarch Ida poignantly intones messages to her family on stage and to the audience. 'History's the only thing to survive,' soprano Adrienne Danrich sings before adding: 'You may have left us, but we will never leave you.' A rumination on love, aspiration, coping and the unyielding weight of the past, the roughly two-hour work that opened Saturday night at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis mixes the living and ghosts ambiguously in a Harlem brownstone. Ricky Ian Gordon's lush score brings to vivid life a libretto by Lynn Nottage and her daughter Ruby Aiyo Gerber, weaving impacts of the Civil War, Great Migration, Black Power movement, AIDS crisis and gentrification. There are five more performances through June 29. 'I just wanted to be able to tell all of these really important moments in Black history,' Gerber said, 'but as they relate to one family up into the current moment, so that there is not this erasure as if the past was the past, which I think increasingly now, especially as we see more and more censorship of Black history, is kind of this pervasive narrative.' Writing began when Gerber was a college senior Now 27, Gerber started 'This House' as a play in 2020 during her senior year at Brown while the coronavirus pandemic unfolded. Her mother, the only woman to win a pair of Pulitzer Prizes for drama, for 'Ruined' and 'Sweat, ' suggested Gerber adapt it with her into an opera composed by Gordon, Nottage's partner on 'Intimate Apparel' at Lincoln Center Theater. Opera Theater of St. Louis commissioned 'This House' for its 50th anniversary festival season as its 45th world premiere. 'Equal parts a family drama, a ghost story and a meditation on inheritance and memory,' company general director Andrew Jorgensen said. Ideas were exchanged when Gordon, Nottage and Gerber met at a Providence, Rhode Island, hotel. Among the changes, an escapist duet the librettists centered around Barcelona was changed to Valencia so as not to be similar to Stephen Sondheim's 'Company.' 'Being a mother-daughter you can be so honest,' Gerber said, recalling her mom telling her of one flowery passage: 'That's corny and I don't think it works.' Nottage still lives in the Brooklyn parlor house where Gerber grew up. 'We have different muscles. I'm someone that comes from the playwriting world,' Nottage said. 'Ruby's comfort zone is really poetry and language. and so I thought that between the two of us, we could divide and conquer in some ways.' Opera is set in Harlem brownstone In the resulting story, a house at 336 Convent Ave. was bought in 1919 by Minus Walker, a sharecropper's son. Zoe, a present-day investment banker (soprano Briana Hunter), and husband Glenn (tenor Brad Bickhardt) mull whether to move back to the house and subdivide the property. Zoe's brother, poetic painter Lindon (baritone Justin Austin), doesn't want to leave the house. and his lover Thomas (bass-baritone Christian Pursell) suggests they travel to Spain. Hunter tapped into anxiety, fear, pain and grief to portray Zoe. 'She's an ambitious woman, and she has been through a lot of really horrible, traumatic events through her family,' Hunter said. 'I understand the desire to kind of escape that. She's kind of a classic case of you can't avoid things forever.' Eight of the 10 characters are Black. There's a love triangle, pregnancies and surprise deaths. The house itself sings in 12-tone chords. Ida's Uncle Percy (tenor Victor Ryan Robertson) is a numbers runner who jolts the first act with an aria 'Drink Up!' 'Sportin' Life on steroids,' Gordon said, referring to the dope dealer in 'The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess.' 'We all are haunted by our past, and we all are haunted by our ghosts,' Gordon said. 'The question of living one's life is how does one reconcile the past and go on? How do you move into a future unbridled and free enough to be liberated and not imprisoned by the past?' Conductor has a penchant for contemporary works Daniela Candillari led her third world premiere in less than two years after Jeanine Tesori's 'Grounded' at the Washington National Opera and Rene Orth's '10 Days in a Madhouse' at Opera Philadelphia. Gordon originally envisioned the orchestra as chamber sized to hold down expenses, but Candillari pushed to add instruments. Conducting this is different from leading Verdi or Puccini. 'You can have two conductors read the score in a very different way,' she said. 'Having that direct source. a living composer who can tell you: This is what I heard and this is how I meant it and this is what this needs to be, that's incredibly invaluable.' Forty-eight players from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra were in the deep pit at the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts, a venue with a thrust stage and difficult acoustics. James Robinson, the company's former artistic director, returned to direct the performances and is likely to bring the staging to Seattle Opera, where he became general and artistic director in September 2024. 'It is kind of a ghost story, and I think that's the most important thing, knowing that we're able to bounce back and forth between time periods efficiently,' he said. For Danrich, portraying Ida has a special resonance. She is a St. Louis native and is staying at a hotel three blocks from where she grew up. 'My cousins, my grandmother, my grandfather, me, my sisters, we all lived in that big old house and we called it the big house,' she said. 'I was like, yep, this is my house. I'm actually basing her movements and her mannerisms off of my mother.'
