Tanya Moodie is currently starring as Esther in Intimate Apparel which has transferred to the Park Theatre (Park200) following a run at the Theatre Royal Bath’s Ustinov Studio.
Directed by Laurence Boswell, Intimate Apparel is Lynn Nottage’s best known play and the recipient of several awards including the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, Outer Critics Circle Award and John Gassner Award.
The play is set in 1905 in New York City where Esther, a black seamstress, sews exquisite lingerie for clients who range from wealthy white patrons to prostitutes. She has saved enough to allow her to dream of one day opening a beauty salon for black women and, at 35 years old, longs for a husband and a future. She begins to receive beautiful letters from a lonesome Caribbean man who is working on the Panama Canal, it looks like life may be about to take a different course…
Tanya most recently received huge acclaim for her terrific performance as Rose in the West End production of Fences (Duchess) opposite Lenny Henry. Just a few of her other theatre credits include playing: Joan/Alice in The Chair Plays (Lyric Hammersmith), Ruth in Sixty-Six Books (Bush), Claire in Catch (Royal Court) and Linda in The Overwhelming (National) as well as Nora in A Doll's House and the title role in Medea (both West Yorkshire Playhouse).
I recently spoke to Tanya about how she initially struggled to connect with her latest role, what makes Lynn’s writing so successful and whether she was able to digest the incredible reaction to her performance in Fences…
Intimate Apparel is an extraordinary play, I’ve never seen anything like it. What were your first impressions when you read the script?
When I first received the script to read for the part I thought, ‘I don’t understand this at all.’ I couldn’t get my head around Esther’s journey, I couldn’t get my head around why it was called Intimate Apparel and I couldn’t get my head around her choices – it felt like I had opened the box of a jigsaw puzzle but had to make the picture myself. As you said, I had also never seen anything like it before. So then I read it again [laughs], thinking about the objectives and trying to piece everything together. For some reason I couldn’t connect on a subjective level with this woman, she seemed very alien.
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