Wedding Band (Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith) Verdict: Mixed-race melodrama Rating: Put from your mind any hope that Wedding Band might concern the ups and downs of an Abba tribute group. The slightly unsatisfactory title of Alice Childress’s 1966 play disguises a very serious and admirably ambitious drama about an illegal interracial relationship in South Carolina in 1918, as the USA prepares to enter World War One. Childress’s focus is on Julia (Deborah Ayorinde), a young black woman who moves into a poor black neighbourhood with her white German-American lover, Herman (David Walmsley). As he succumbs to the Spanish flu epidemic, black objections are pretty mild (‘if you’re gonna pick white, you better pick rich’). But the white reaction is full-on panic-stricken supremacist poison — including ape chanting, and n-words from Herman’s mother (Geraldine Alexander). Written at the height of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the story chimes not only with the country’s roots in slavery, but also America’s involvement in the Vietnam war, which saw so many black conscripts fighting for a country that designated them as second-class citizens. But Childress’s play is most engrossing as a portrait of a community. Ayorinde is a rare beauty as a Julia who is shy, decent, intelligent, ambitious and passionate — forced into raging defiance at the society that prohibits her marriage. Walmsley, as her lover Herman, is a proud baker who rejects his sister and mother’s vile racism as he lapses into the delirium of flu. And Lachele Carl is lethally sharp as the landlady Fanny, who recalls the time before segregation after the Civil War. Monique Touko’s meticulous production is cleverly defined by Paul Wills’s set, which defines family living quarters with rusty iron fences. I could have done with a more compelling plot, but over the two hours and 40 minutes, this is a chastening political and ethical melodrama. Kathy And Stella Solve A Murder (Ambassadors Theatre, London) Verdict: Murder on the dance floor Rating: By Georgina Brown The clue is in the title. But it’s less a wacky whodunnit and more of a slapdash spoof – and at its fitfully hilarious heart a rather sweet celebration of friendship. Bookish, introverted, ginger-nut Kathy and bold, brazen, brunette Stella — complementary miss-fit children — met at primary school and bonded over their mutual interest in murder. Now grown-up, still best mates and stuck in Hull doing nowt much, they share a murder podcast. Small beans, but it amuses them and their murder-mad followers in Hull. Then (spoiler alert) the decapitated head of Felicia Taylor, their murder-mystery writer role-model (author of Heads Will Roll) arrives in a bag in Kathy’s mum’s garage, their make-shift studio. They were the last people to see her. Suddenly the women become part of the story. Cue: ‘F**k! We Don’t Know What We’re Doing’ and a plot so convoluted and daft (Felicia’s identical twin sister, Patricia, and then her identical brother, Horatio, pop up along the way), that I hadn’t a clue what was going. Never mind. It has its moments. Most of them thanks to Rebekah Hinds’ brash, bolshie Stella, brilliantly channelling Nessa from Gavin And Stacey, relishing her Hull accent (‘know’ is ‘ner’ round these parts) and selling the songs for much more than they are worth, while sliding round the garage in a wheelie chair. But her huge performance can’t make up for the mediocre music which is much too loud, drowning out too many lyrics which may well have been worth hearing. By far the best are the quiet numbers: Kathy and Stella’s silly but soulful duet ‘If I Didn’t Have You (I Would Die)’ and Bronte Barbe’s even sillier solo ‘I Never Felt So Alive’ …delivered in the morgue. Moreover, it’s missing a killer melody and is overblown by a good 40 minutes. Hinds aside, this is a classic case of less being much, much more.
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