In a scene from “Crowns” (from left to right): Sharon Catherine Blanks, Vanessa Bell Calloway and Angela Wildflower-Polk look over one of the titular accessories. (Photo by Craig Schwartz/ERT)
Story Created:
May 29, 2009 at 2:20 PM PST
Story Updated:
May 29, 2009 at 2:20 PM PST
Seven years after its New Jersey stage debut, “Crowns,” an acclaimed, lyrical history of motherhood, sisterhood and millinery, has made an enthralling opening here for the first time.
A co-production with The Pasadena Playhouse, the play is being performed through June 14 at the Ebony Repertory Theatre, part of the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center on Washington Boulevard.
Written by actress and award-winning playwright Regina Taylor (CBS’s “The Unit”), the play is adapted from the best-selling coffee-table book by author Craig Marberry and photographer Michael Cunningham.
Employing minimal but eye-catching set designs, “Crowns” tells the story of Yolanda (Angela Wildflower Polk), a tough-talking Brooklyn girl whose brother has been shot and killed.
Heartbroken, she is sent to stay with her grandmother, Mother Shaw (Paula Kelly) in South Carolina. Skeptical at first, she accompanies Mother Shaw to church where she is introduced to a strong, spiritual and proud circle of women.
Resplendent with “hatitude,” each woman has a treasure trove of colorful stories that have a lot to say about history, family and hats.
“Our crown has already been bought and paid for,” says Mother Shaw, borrowing a quote from James Baldwin, “all we have to do is wear it.”
And wear it they do, as the multi-generational cast of six women and one man (a scene-stealing Clinton-Derricks-Carroll) sing and dance traveling back and forth in time — from the tobacco fields to the picket lines of the civil rights movement. In the form of the traditional African headwrap she favors, one question hovers over “Crowns”: Will Yolanda learns to appreciate her past and brighter future by wearing her own crown in the shape of a traditional, African head wrap.
The remaining sisterhood of the traveling hats includes Sharon Catherine Blanks, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Suzanne Douglas and Ann Weldon.
With each vignette punctuated by applause, the spiritual theme certainly resonated with a mature preview audience, although Taylor isn’t adverse to including some racy dialogue. As one character recollects through her mother: “I’ve raised seven girls and one boy, five after I went blind.”
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