Intimate Apparel: a 'gorgeous, vibrant' production

Samira Wiley as Esther in Intimate Apparel

'Full of longing': Samira Wiley as Esther

(Image credit: Helen Murray)

published 3 July 2025

Seven years after Lynette Linton made her name at the Donmar Warehouse with a "blistering" production of "Sweat", she has "returned to the scene of her triumph" with another "devastatingly fine" show, said Fiona Mountford in The Telegraph.

The Bafta-nominated British director has turned her hand to a revival of Lynn Nottage's "exquisite" play about a Black corset-maker in 1905 New York, who spends her days crafting intricate undergarments for wealthy women while quietly yearning for a romance of her own.

Esther (Samira Wiley) has recently turned 35 and lives in a rooming house. When she begins receiving "increasingly affectionate" letters from George Armstrong (Kadiff Kirwan), a Barbadian engineer working on the Panama Canal, she is enthralled. But Esther can't read or write, so she enlists her unhappily married client Mrs Van Buren (Claudia Jolly) and "no-nonsense" sex worker friend Mayme (Faith Omole) to help pen her replies.

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There are some "predictable revelations" in the second act and George's character doesn't have the same depth as the others, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. But it's a "gorgeous, vibrant" play. Inspired by a photograph of her great-grandmother who worked as a seamstress in New York at the turn of the century, Nottage takes the "scraps" of information she could find about her and "stitches them into a vivid quilt". Like the corsets Esther crafts, it's a "lovely, caring piece of work".

Irenie Forshaw is a features writer at The Week, covering arts, culture and travel. She began her career in journalism at Leeds University, where she wrote for the student newspaper, The Gryphon, before working at The Guardian and The New Statesman Group. Irenie then became a senior writer at Elite Traveler, where she oversaw The Experts column.