 |
| James Broderick, Ruby Dee. (Photos: Friedman-Abeles.) |
 |
| Ruby Dee, Hilda Haynes. |
Julia Augustine (Ruby
Dee), a relatively well-educated, sharp-thinking Black woman in her 30s, has
been the mistress of Herman (James Broderick, succeeded by Robert Loggia), a white baker, for 10 years. The
miscegenation laws of South Carolina make their longed-for marriage illegal,
and do not even permit Herman to be in Julia’s abode. She has thus moved
frequently in search of a place where she and he can meet without attracting
undue attention.
Herman has never had
the courage to take Julia away to the presumably more accommodating North,
where he can marry and live with her. He contracts the flu (1918 was the year
of the horrendous influenza pandemic) and is put up at her new apartment, where his
bigoted mother (Jean David) and sister, Annabelle (Polly Holliday), come to take him home,
insulting Julia in the process. When Herman finally returns to take Julia North, she blows up at him. Eventually she succumbs to her emotions as he dies in her arms.
Played in Ming Cho
Lee’s beautifully designed tenement backyard set, with the interior of Julia’s
apartment visible, the play sharply limned the life of the housing complex with
its diverse characters. There were criticisms that these people seemed too
charming and amusing as opposed to the stereotypical rednecks, and several
commentators suggested that the material could have inspired a musical like Show Boat or Porgy and Bess. Childress’s anger at white racism was apparent, but
not overly hammered; when a tone of 1972 militantism occasionally crept in the
effect was discomfiting.
Among the charges
aimed at the play were its “sentimentality” and “old-fashioned” style, in Clive
Barnes’s words. Douglas Watt picked on its drawn-out first act, a few cardboard
characters, and a feeling of the “pat and superficial.” Yet it was liked heartily
for its touching subject matter, its human insights, and its outstanding
performances.
“Wedding Band,” wrote Harold Clurman, “has an authenticity which,
whatever its faults, makes it compelling both as script and performance.” Both
Ruby Dee and James Broderick (father of Matthew) were extolled, as were the
others in the ensemble, among them Hilda Haynes, Juanita Clark, Clarice Taylor, Brandon Maggart (suceeded by Anthony Palmer), and Albert Hall. Dee’s performance earned her a Drama Desk Award for
Outstanding Performance.
A well-received TV version in 1974 costarred Dee and J.D. Cannon.
Do you enjoy Theatre’s Leiter Side? As you may know,
since New York’s theatres were forced into hibernation by Covid-19, this blog
has provided daily posts on the hundreds of shows that opened in the city, Off
and on Broadway, between 1970 and 1975. These have been drawn from an
unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of
the New York Stage series,
which covers every show, of every type, from 1920 through 1950. Unfortunately,
the publisher, Greenwood Press, decided it was too expensive to continue the
project beyond 1950.
Before I began offering these 1970-1975 entries, however, Theatre’s
Leiter Side posted over 1,600 of my actual reviews for shows from 2012
through 2020. The first two years of that experience were published in separate
volumes for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 (the latter split into two volumes). The
2012-2013 edition also includes a memoir in which I describe how, when I was
72, I used the opportunity of suddenly being granted free access to every New
York show to begin writing reviews of everything I saw. Interested readers can
find these collections on Amazon.com by
clicking here.
Next up: The Wedding of Iphigenia and Iphigenia in Concert.
