Lynn Nottage takes us back to New York of 1905 and the imagined world of the black seamstress Esther (Samira Wiley), who sews intimate garments for clients such as black sex worker Mayme (Faith Omole) and wealthy white Mrs Van Buren (Claudia Jolly).
She spends a good deal of time in a room she rents from Mrs Dickson (Nicola Hughes). Having worked for 18 years, she hopes one day to have saved enough to start a beauty parlour for black women.
She’s 35 and feels it's time she got married, but there's no one around who fits the bill. Instead, she makes do with letters from George (Kadiff Kirwan), a man she has never met, who writes regularly from Panama. Since she can’t read or write, she relies on Mayme and Mrs Van Buren to shape her replies for her.
Once a week, she visits the white Mr Marks (Alex Waldmann), who supplies fabrics. Both share a warm, common enjoyment of the different material and are increasingly drawn to each other.
Nothing very much happens very slowly in the first gentle seventy minutes. The pace suddenly speeds up in the last hour when George arrives. Without really knowing each other, Esther and George marry. An early difficulty is George finding work and not having work, he dreams grandly of buying horses. His frustrations do not improve his crude insensitivity to Esther.
It’s a clear, measured performance, ably directed by Lynette Linton, but the story feels very predictable, the characters lack depth, and until the second half, there is barely any dramatic tension.