I took my mom to see a play last night to celebrate her birthday. Intimate Apparel at the Pasadena Playhouse. It was surprisingly very sad. The main character was a 35 year old African American seamstress in 1905 New York who'd been working since the age of 9 and had never really felt loved or that she belonged anywhere. She was saving her money to open a beauty parlor and was jealous of the girls she knew who were getting married and seemed happy. Her two main confidants were a rich, sad, married white woman and a black prostitute. Anyway, she believes she has found love when a man she'd never met began writing her letters from Panama. And having never laid eyes on him nor ever hearing his voice, she eventually agrees to marry him like a desperate fool. Shortly after they're married it becomes obvious that he isn't who she expected him to be. He's verbally abusive, unloving, and she even learns that he is cheating on her with her prostitute friend. And in one last desperate attempt at love, she breaks down and allows him to talk her into giving him all of her life savings. Money that was earmarked for her dream to open a beauty parlor. Of course, he never returns and she ends up living back in the rooming house she'd started in, trying to etch out a dream that is now much farther away than before. During all this, it's obvious that she and the Jewish man that she buys fabric from have developed feelings for one another. But it's 1905, he's white, she's black, and his family has already arranged for him to marry a woman he's never met who lives in another country. Although sad, the actors did a fantastic job and the set and vintage lingerie was absolutely whimsical.