SEATTLE – A lot of women can plop a hat on their head, but it takes a certain attitude to carry it. It’s called “hattitude” and the women in “Crowns” have plenty.
“Hattitude is something you have to posses in order to wear a hat well,” says Velma, one of the stylish women of “Crowns,” the season-opening production of Intiman Theatre.
“It makes you happy to see a hat that looks good on someone,” declares Mother Shaw, the matriarch of “Crowns.” “Girl, you are wearing that hat. That’s the talk we talk.”
“Crowns” has enough fabulous hats – more than 130 stacked floor to ceiling by my count – to qualify as a fashion show, with some hat tips and etiquette to boot: how to tilt a hat just so, flirt with it, or embrace without mishap when you’re wearing a wide-brimmed hat.
Regina Taylor’s one-act play is a gospel-infused tribute to the church-going black women who proudly wear their “crowns” every Sunday morning.
Through stories and anecdotes, these five strong women recount the trials and the joys of their lives while imparting some social and cultural history of black Americans, from slavery through Civil Rights to today.
It’s their stories, and the hand-clapping gospel songs, that give “Crowns” its buoyant, life-affirming spirit. And the cast is as fabulous as the hats.
“Crowns” was adapted by playwright Regina Taylor from Michael Cunningham’s best-selling book of photographs of church-going black women. Craig Marberry compiled oral histories of the women to go with the photos.
Taylor took these stories and compressed them into a composite of five southern black women. The structure of “Crowns” is episodic, a series vignettes in which the women take turns telling stories – funny, poignant and heartfelt – about the struggles and sorrows and joy.
Hats are somewhere in most of these stories as symbols of pride and resilience, as when Mother Shaw relives her fierce pride when she buys a hat in a store that was once for “whites only.”
These stories are interspersed with a selection of stirring gospel music such as “Marching to Zion” and “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” beautifully performed under the guidance of music director the Rev. Patrinell Wright.
To give this mostly plotless play some dramatic tension, Taylor added the character of Yolinda (Felicia V. Loud), a street-smart teen from Brooklyn who is sent to live with her grandmother (Mother Shaw) in Darlington, S.C., after her brother is murdered.
Yolinda, a hip-hop rapper who wears a baseball cap backward, is having none of this circle of women with their old-fashioned Southern ways and their hats. But as her anger turns to grief, she is won over by this sisterhood.
The first-rate class includes the five church sisters Cynthia Jones, Shaunyce Omar, Gretha Boston, Deidrie N. Henry and Josephine Howell.
Doug Eskew, who portrays several male characters including the long-suffering husband of a woman with too many hats, is a big part of the show’s success, especially when he adds his thrilling tenor voice to the musical numbers. Bill Sims Jr. and Mark L. Sampson are the adept off-stage musicians.
Care Wong’s set includes five tall cases lined with an impressive array of hats. The stage direction is by Jacqueline Moscuo, and Donald Byrd’s choreography goes a long way to air out what it could a very long (one hour and 40 minute) one-act production.
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