Stratford 2023: ‘Wedding Band’ is a complex, tender love story

Wedding Band

By Alice Childress, directed by Sam White. Until Oct. 1 at Stratford’s Tom Patterson Theatre, 11 Lakeside Dr, Stratford. stratfordfestival.ca or 1-800-567-1600.

Sorry, Beyoncé. The most thrilling Renaissance Tour this year belongs to playwright Alice Childress, whose works have, until recently, been interfered with, obscured and gone underappreciated.

Not anymore.

Theatre companies across North America have rediscovered Childress’s work. A revival of her 1955 play “Trouble in Mind” was one of the first Broadway successes after theatres reopened in 2021. Productions of that 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 Theatre Centre and the Citadel Theatre in Winnipeg and Edmonton.

Now the Stratford Festival has revived her 1965 play “Wedding Band.” And like the ceremony in that title, it’s a cause for celebration.

The play is set in a humble, predominantly Black community in 1918 Charleston, S.C., where Julia (Antoinette Rudder), a seamstress, has just moved into a small house, one of many rented out by a nosy, genteel landlady named Fanny (Liza Huget).

Her neighbours include Mattie (Ijeoma Emesowum), whose husband is off fighting on a ship somewhere in Europe, and Lula (Joelle Crichton), whose adopted son Nelson (Micah Woods) is on weekend-leave from the army.

Julia has a man herself, but she’s not so eager to share the details of their relationship – until, that is, she’s asked about marriage by one of those neighbours.

“It’s against the law for Black and white to get married,” she lets slip. And that soon ends the conversation.

In just one example of Childress’s efficient storytelling, we also learn that Julia – shunned by Black and white people – has 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 forces his way into her home before boldly propositioning her.

Things get more complex in the second scene, when Herman (Cyrus Lane), Julia’s lover and the struggling, hard-working owner of a bakery, enters the picture, and gives us a glimpse of what their 10-year relationship has been like – not, as per 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 play feel so fresh and revelatory. This isn’t “To Kill a Mockingbird,” where the Black characters nobly stand up as Atticus Finch walks by. Childress’s women argue, complain, size each other up, brag, laugh, pray, confess their sins to each other.

Huget’s Fanny, elegantly costumed by Sarah Uwadiae to illustrate her prosperity, proudly exclaims she’s “high class, quality.” In one of many surprising scenes, she offers the young, strapping Nelson the opportunity to work as her assistant – and to provide his mother with free rent – in exchange for some, ahem, permanent companionship.

These women have agency over their lives – unless, of course, they’re dealing with things beyond their control, like the unpredictable white folks surrounding them.

I don’t want to give away too much of the story, which Childress has carefully plotted out. But I will say that the influenza pandemic of 1918 plays a part – giving the work even more relevance today. And when Herman’s sister Annabelle (Maev Beaty) and mother (Lucy Peacock) discover where he is, they pay a visit, eventually raising the stakes and putting everyone’s lives in possible danger with the white authorities.

Amidst all the chaos, the love story between Julia and Herman feels like a gentle balm. Childress captures their relationship with real tenderness; a story Herman tells Julia about an elderly couple he knows – a couple that reminds him of what they might be like in old age – overflows with affection. They know practical things about each other, too. When they discuss eventually moving up North, with Julia going ahead while he works to pay off his loan, Herman asks her where he should buy his clothes in town, and she rattles off the stores. They are, although the law forbids it, essentially a married couple already.

But Julia has no illusions. After she uses the phrase, “When white folks decide,” Herman corrects her and says, “People, Julia. People.” He wants to believe he doesn’t see race. But this is Childress subtly pointing out the stark reality of the world in 1918, when race ultimately matters more to Julia because she has far more to lose.

The play is set in 1918, but this central argument over 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 pondered by several of the characters – and weight it deserves.

Rudder, who in her two previous seasons at Stratford has had smaller roles, is magnificent as Julia: patient and forgiving, but open-eyed and realistic. Lane imbues Herman with a gentle, ardent soul. As Julia’s neighbours, Huget, Crichton and Emesowum snap to life with sharp, distinct personalities, while Woods’s Nelson delivers one of the play’s most harrowing speeches with frustrated anger. Even in their smaller roles, Beaty and Peacock leave indelible impressions as women who are unhappy with their lives and believe others are responsible for their misfortunes.

Richard M. Morris Jr.’s set captures the cluster of neighbouring houses and backyards effectively. Because of the Tom Patterson Theatre’s long, narrow playing area, White occasionally moves Julia’s room forward along a track to a more central area on the stage, so it becomes easier for everyone to see what’s going on. While this does feel awkward at first, it pays off magnificently in the production’s transcendent final moments.

White and composer Beau Dixon have also heightened the script with bursts of music – spirituals, snatches of dialogue sung rather than spoken. All of it adds to the production’s power.

In the early history of “Wedding Band,” white producers wanted Childress to change the script for Broadway, making it more about the white character of Herman. She refused. (Her refusal to change her earlier play “Trouble in Mind” for white producers also resulted in her not making history as the first African American female playwright to have a play on Broadway – an honour that went instead to Lorraine Hansberry and “A Raisin in the Sun.”)

How lucky we are that Childress stood by her magnificent work, which amplifies the voices and experiences of Black women more than 50 years after it was written.

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