Regina Taylor's musical "Crowns" is an ode to African-American music and culture.
Rap, gospel, blues, and soul — and that’s just in the first 10 minutes.
Regina Taylor’s musical “Crowns” is an ode to African-American music and culture, and under the direction of the playwright, the McCarter’s production is a joyous triumph. Boisterous, bold and ebullient, the show invites its audience to share the journey of its central character from understanding to appreciating to celebrating black history and culture.
“Crowns” returns to the McCarter where it premiered in 2002, slightly updated from its previous version.
Yolanda (Gabrielle Beckford) is a teenager from Englewood on the south side of Chicago whose mother sends her to spend the summer with her grandmother in the deep south after the violence of the Chicago drug trade claims the life of her beloved brother Teddy.
Yolanda is stubborn, occasionally petulant, but Mother Shaw (Shari Addison) is determined to teach her the ways of the south, her family roots, and her heritage. Lesson number one: hats. Mother Shaw and her girlfriends dress elegantly for church, and are never without the all-important hat.
To an outsider like Yolanda, this may seem trivial, just a particular fashion choice by a particular group of women, but as the ennobling title of Taylor’s play makes clear, these accessories are more than mere hats. As Yolanda will come to realize, by adorning their heads, these women fortify themselves by continuing a tradition that stretches back to Africa and has been an important staple of the African-American community.
“Crowns” is full of this sort of rich, layered meaning, but the show is far from lecture on cultural history. Instead, Taylor’s reflections on the healing and empowering potential of black culture weave themselves through the fabric of a rollicking musical.
The process of Mother Shaw and company instructing Yolanda about the importance of church services, for example, is a joyous gospel number that evolves into spirited ring shout. As they do in performing most of the stirring compositions of Jaret Landon, Diedre Murray, and Chesney Snow, the cast stomps and claps and raises their voices in cathartic waves of celebration.
During much of the first half of the play, Beckford’s Yolanda is obstinate, scowling as she feels forced to watch her grandmother’s culture unfold before her, but when her awakening comes as we know it will, the show’s celebration grows more energetic.
The notion of evolving into self-awareness by communing with one’s cultural roots is nothing new, and the concept of church hats’ deep cultural roots Taylor finds in the book by Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry, which she adapts into this musical. But Taylor’s estimable achievement is finding and celebrating the musical soul of Yolanda and her history and translating that powerfully to the stage.
At the McCarter, the success of that effort finds root in a virtuosic seven-person cast, as well as a small on-stage orchestra consisting only of Jaret Landon on keys and trumpet, and David Pleasant who is billed as “Drumfolk Riddim Specialist.” Before the show is over, Pleasant will pound drums and a tambourine, play a banjo, guitar and harmonica, stomp his feet and shout, all adding eagerly and valuably to the celebration that is “Crowns.”
This is a play that locates history and culture and unity in the long, evolving continuum of African-American music, an investment that produces a show as rich and spiritual as it is unbridled fun.
CROWNS
McCarter Theatre
Running through April 1
91 University Place, Princeton
Tickets: available online (http://www.mccarter.org/) or by phone, 609-258-2787.
Patrick Maley may be reached at patrickjmaley@gmail.com. Find him on Twitter and Instagram @PatrickJMaley. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook.