Writer: Alice Childress
Director: Monique Touko
American writer Alice Childress wrote during turbulent times about other turbulent times. Her play, Wedding Band… was first performed in 1966, when Civil Rights protests were at their height and war was raging in Vietnam, and it is set in the Deep South in 1918, when racial tensions were at boiling point, Spanish Flu was beginning to spread across the world and war was raging in Europe. There is more than enough drama here to warm up a cool Summer evening in Hammersmith.
Childress tells a Romeo and Juliet-type story of two lovers coming from opposite sides of a community that is torn apart. Julia (Deborah Ayorinde) is a black seamstress and Herman (David Walmsley) is a white baker. They have been together for 10 years in a covert relationship, but interracial marriage is still illegal in their State, South Carolina and they know that they must move north to formalise their union. However, once their relationship becomes known, the law is a lesser problem than the deep-rooted prejudices of their friends and families.
With a strong company of 11, director Monique Touko’s lively production paints a vivid picture of the divided community. Buildings are represented in skeletal form in Paul Wills’ set design, enriched by changing colours in lighting designed by Matt Haskins. The atmospheric staging is enhanced further by the playing of gospel music in the background.
The trigger for the drama comes when Herman comes down with Spanish Flu. Julia pleads for a doctor to be called, but she meets resistance all round as Herman’s domineering sister and his spiteful, foul-mouthed mother seek to take control. Herman in his sick bed lies centre stage while competing forces circle like vultures around him. Throughout, Touko provides the imagery to match the poetry in the writing.
An astonishingly powerful performance by Ayorinde lies at the heart of this production’s success. Defiantly wearing a white wedding dress, she exudes love and anger in equal measures. This play could easily have lunged towards romantic melodrama, yet it stops well short of that partly due to skilful playing, but mainly due to the writer’s clarity in making her central characters common people with simple aspirations and not heroes.
Wedding Band…is written to shock, but it would be interesting to know if the audiences’ gasps of horror in the London of 2024 come at the same points as those in the play’s home country in 1966. Much has changed, but Childress asks questions of the modern world as much as she interrogates history.
Runs until 29 June 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
A powerful indictment
