Lyric Hammersmith

Love is set up to fail in Alice Childress’s 1962 classic play ‘Wedding Band’. It’s set in South Carolina, 1918 during the Spanish Flu pandemic. Black seamstress Julia and white baker Herman are celebrating ten years of being together. They know each other inside out: he has to ask her what size socks he wears and where to buy his shirts. They’ve shared countless wedding cakes over the years. But, they are stuck in limbo – in this state interracial marriage is against the law. And so, in Monique Touko’s production their relationship plays out across a battlefield. Julia has moved into a new home in a set of connecting rental houses. Here, she is surrounded by a sisterhood of Black women. Children scurry past yodelling; the women do their best to offer each other neighbourly favours and spend their evenings gossiping away. And yet, even in this safe haven, when Julia reveals she has a white partner, the news sends acidic ripples through the community.   Herman’s entrance disrupts the peace even further: he is an outsider that comes crashing in. On a set made up of wire fences, designed by Paul Wills, the couple are always one wrong step away from danger. Their scenes together are fuelled by passion but are back lit by a menacing red light. Does it indicate their love? Or the hell that is just around the corner? You’re never quite sure as the couple swerve from deep devotion to one another to heated conflict between each scene. Herman – played tenderly by David Walmsley – avoids

Aussie writer and performer Yve Blake scored a cult domestic smash in the immediate pre-pandemic era with ‘Fangirls’ (aka ‘FANGIRLS’), a subversive musical that she wrote the book, lyrics and music for, and even initially starred in. Inspired by interviews with actual pop star fangirls, the musical follows Edna, a 14-year-old Australian girl madly in love with one ‘Harry’, a member of a massive-selling pop group (hmm, rings a bell). When the band comes to Sydney she’s determined to meet Harry – at any cost. Although it seems probable it will be substantially or totally recast, this is, nonetheless, a London remounting of the original production, headed by Australian director Paige Rattray.