Vanessa Bell Calloway and Suzzanne Douglas demonstrate the various subtleties of hat wearing, the seductive cocking to one side and the posture needed to convey the item’s full grace. Her offering of “His Eye is On the Sparrow” keeps rising in volume, almost incredibly, as the spirit accelerates within her. Matching his religious ecstasy is Sharon Catherine Blanks who plays an otherwise shy woman who’s moved to sing out to the Lord each Sunday. Mother Shaw (Paula Kelly), a living link to the generations that have passed, initiates her not-particularly-interested granddaughter into the inherited symbolism of her wardrobe practices. Yolanda (Angela Wildflower Polk) is the streetwise high school rebel, garbed in her gangster best, who’s carted away to her grandma’s after tragedy strikes her urban home. Willing participation in the rhapsodic atmosphere isn’t required, but it will surely enhance your experience, especially if you’re seated next to someone flailing about in an incautious Easter bonnet. And the setup of a Brooklyn teen being sent to live with her grandmother in the South after her brother is fatally shot can seem like a lumbering contrivance.īut when the performers swan around in their churchgoing finery, holding themselves with the extra dignity conferred by the stylish nests perched atop their heads, the lackluster plot dissolves into a thrilling ritual. Ebony Rep artistic director Israel Hicks, who staged that acclaimed revival, lends an assured directorial hand to ‘Crowns’ - one that Wilson, whose plays magisterially heeded James Baldwin’s call for “a profound articulation of the black tradition,” would no doubt have heartily applauded.Īs drama, this festival of flamboyant caps is only intermittently effective, but as a communion between actors and audience wanting to deepen their appreciation of this particularly freighted history of hat-wearing, the work has a power that extends beyond its artistic level. This presentation of Taylor’s 2002 play is a co-production between Pasadena Playhouse and Ebony Repertory Theatre, whose inaugural production last fall of August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” succeed by all accounts in setting a high bar for the new venue.
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