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Tuesday, May 22, 2007
IKAM’s ‘Crowns’ @ 14th Street Playhouse
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B-
Regina Taylor’s “Crowns” is holding up well. Four years after the Alliance Theatre introduced these oral history-based lessons in “hattitude,” the play has been taken out of its box and paraded again at the 14th Street Playhouse.
While the IKAM Productions version can’t boast the opulent design and high-caliber artistry of the piece Taylor directed at the Alliance in 2003, it is a wholly welcome second look that feels like a family reunion steeped in memory, celebration and no small amount of feathers, fringe and fur.
Directed by Andrea Frye and starring the inimitable Bernardine Mitchell as the matriarchal Mother Shaw, “Crowns” seems destined to become a burnished and beloved classic in the tradition of Alvin Ailey’s “Revelations” or Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” last year’s inaugural show from IKAM.
Based on photographer Michael Cunningham and author Craig Marberry’s coffee-table book, “Crowns” mines those real-life testimonials for their inherent theatricality. In this case, choreographer Charles Bullock adds joyful and vivid dance moves, and musical director S. Renee Clark imbues the gospel score with percussive zest and soulful reverence. Frye has done a nice job of pairing newcomers Dawn Bynoe (Wanda) and Lauren Jones (Jeanette) with such old hands as Deidre N. Henry (Mabel) and Marguerite Hannah-Middleton (Velma).
My problem with “Crowns” is the same as it ever was: Taylor’s unoriginal and uninspired dramatic framework. Marberry, who also published the interviews on which the Alliance’s recent “Cuttin’ Up” was based, seems to have done most of the serious work. Taylor simply layers on traditional music and introduces the character of Yolanda (Naima J. Carter), a rebellious, rap-spouting young Brooklynite who gets an education in culture and fashion from her Southern grandmother — and her elder relative’s circle of church-going hat queens.
Though there’s a point in Act 2 where you feel like there’s nothing much happening but a lot of hats getting pushed around, the piece redeems itself with comedy and sass. In this telling of “Crowns,” the more funereal aspects don’t work as well as the insistent one-liners. “I’d lend my children before I’d lend my hats,” says one especially ardent fashion maven. “I know my children would find their way home. My hats might not.”
Among the performers, Jones is delightfully plucky; Clinton “HU” Harris is wonderfully expressive in all the male roles; and Mitchell, whether warbling “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” or playing a character who integrated a hoity-toity department store, is sublime.
While Darryl L. Harris’ hat designs aren’t always as posh as they could be, the final number — with all the ladies in all-white hats and gowns — is a dazzler. Whatever this “Crowns” lacks in millinery grandness, it makes up for in heart and soul. “Crowns” is an authentic slice of African-American culture, whipped into a frothy, delectable and crowd-pleasing entertainment.
Long live the queens.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. 1 p.m. Saturdays. 7 p.m. Sundays. Through June 10. IKAM Productions, 14th Street Playhouse, 173 14th St., Midtown. 404-733-4754; www.woodruffcenter.org/14thstplayhouse
THE VERDICT: Soulful and fun.
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