["Wedding Band" is an] honest and provocative look into black life in America just as World War I was giving way to the Twenties, though it has its vitamin deficiencies as drama…. Using a kind of South Carolina backyard chorus as counterpoint to a private tug-of-war between [a seamstress and her white lover of long standing] …, Miss Childress is at her best with the peripheral figures who lead prayer, read letters for one another, and spy upon the forbidden liaison with generous candor….

The play, as it stands, does little more than illustrate what we have already known: that intermarriage, especially in redneck districts, is apt to be opposed….

[The] play moves only at its edges; the center feels, and is, impotent, a joint surrender rather than a joined battle. (p. 323)

Walter Kerr, in The New York Times, Section 2 (© 1972 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission...