Stratford 2023: ‘Wedding Band’ a complex, tender love story
Wedding ring
By Alice Childress, directed by Sam White. Until October 1 at Stratford’s Tom Patterson Theatre, 11 Lakeside Dr, Stratford. stratfordfestival.ca or 1-800-567-1600.
Sorry, Beyonce. The most exciting Renaissance Tour this year is from playwright Alice Childress, whose works have until recently been distorted, obscured and undervalued.
Not anymore.
Theater companies in North America have rediscovered Childress’ work. A revival of her 1955 play “Trouble in Mind” was one of the first Broadway hits after theaters reopened in 2021. Productions of the same play followed here in Canada, first at the Shaw Festival in 2022 – where it made several best-of lists – and then, earlier this year, in a co-production between the Royal Manitoba Theater Center and the Citadel Theater in Winnipeg and Edmonton.
Now the Stratford Festival has revived her 1965 play ‘Wedding Band’. And like the ceremony in that title, it’s cause for celebration.
The play is set in a humble, mostly black community in 1918 Charleston, SC, where Julia (Antoinette Rudder), a dressmaker, has just moved into a small house, one of many rented out by a nosy, genteel landlady named Fanny (Liza Huget).
Her neighbors include Mattie (Ijeoma Emesowum), whose husband is fighting on a ship somewhere in Europe, and Lula (Joelle Crichton), whose adopted son, Nelson (Micah Woods), is on a weekend leave from the army.
Julia has a husband of her own, but she’s not too keen on sharing the details of their relationship – until she’s asked about marriage by one of those neighbors.
“It’s against the law for black and white to get married,” she says. And with that, the conversation quickly ends.
In just one example of Childress’s efficient storytelling, we also learn that Julia—shunned by black and white people—had to move several times over the past few years. Early on, a white salesman (Kevin Kruchkywich) recognizes her from one of her former addresses, and brazenly breaks into her home before boldly proposing to her.
Things get more complicated in the second scene, when Herman (Cyrus Lane), Julia’s lover and the struggling, hard-working bakery owner, comes into view and gives us a glimpse of what their 10-year relationship has been like – not, as usual, from the privileged perspective of a white man, but from the knowing eyes and heart of a black woman.
That’s what makes this piece so fresh and revealing. This isn’t “To Kill a Mockingbird,” where the black characters rise nobly as Atticus Finch walks by. The women of Childress quarrel, complain, judge each other, brag, laugh, pray, confess their sins to each other.
Huget’s Fanny, elegantly costumed by Sarah Uwadiae to illustrate her prosperity, proudly exclaims that she is “high class, quality”. In one of many surprising scenes, she offers the young, burly Nelson the chance to work as her assistant – and give his mother free rent – in exchange for, ahem, permanent companionship.
These women have a say in their lives—unless, of course, they’re dealing with things beyond their control, like the unpredictable white people around them.
I don’t want to give too much away from the story, which Childress has carefully laid out. But I will say that the 1918 flu pandemic plays a role, making the work even more relevant today. And when Herman’s sister Annabelle (Maev Beaty) and mother (Lucy Peacock) discover his whereabouts, they pay a visit, ultimately raising the stakes and potentially putting everyone’s lives in danger with the white authorities.
In the midst of all the chaos, the love story between Julia and Herman feels like a soft balm. Childress captures their relationship with genuine tenderness; a story Herman tells Julia about an elderly couple he knows – a couple who reminds him of what they could be like in old age – overflows with affection. They also know practical things about each other. When they discuss eventually moving north, with Julia continuing as he works to pay off his loan, Herman asks her where to buy his clothes in town, and she rattles off the shops. They are already a married couple, although the law prohibits it.
But Julia is under no illusions. After she uses the phrase, “If white people decide,” Herman corrects her and says, “People, Julia.” People.” He wants to believe he doesn’t see race. But this is Childress subtly pointing to the stark reality of the world in 1918, when race is ultimately more important to Julia because she has much more to lose.
The play is set in 1918, but this central argument about race would still be relevant in the 1960s, when Childress wrote the play and 17 states had anti-miscegenation laws.
Director Sam White’s production gives the play the dignity — a word several characters have pondered — and the weight it deserves.
Rudder, who has had smaller roles in her two previous seasons at Stratford, is fantastic as Julia: patient and forgiving, but open-eyed and realistic. Lane imbues Herman with a soft, fiery soul. As Julia’s neighbors, Huget, Crichton and Emesowum come to life with sharp, distinct personalities, Woods’ Nelson delivers one of the play’s most poignant speeches with frustrated fury. Even in their minor roles, Beaty and Peacock leave an indelible impression as women who are dissatisfied with their lives and believe others are responsible for their misfortunes.
The set of Richard M. Morris Jr. effectively captures the cluster of neighboring houses and backyards. Due to the long, narrow playing area of the Tom Patterson Theater, White occasionally moves Julia’s room forward along a track to a more centrally located area on stage, making it easier for everyone to see what’s going on. While this feels awkward at first, it pays off superbly in the production’s transcendent final moments.
White and composer Beau Dixon also augmented the script with bursts of music – spirituals, snatches of dialogue sung instead of spoken. All this adds to the power of production.
In the early history of “Wedding Band,” white producers wanted Childress to change the script for Broadway so it would be more about Herman’s white character. She refused. (Her refusal to change her earlier play “Trouble in Mind” for white producers also resulted in her failing to make history as the first African-American female playwright to stage a play on Broadway – an honor that instead went to Lorraine Hansberry and “A Raisin in the Sun.”)
How fortunate we are that Childress stood behind her wonderful work, which amplifies the voices and experiences of black women, more than 50 years after it was written.
