McCarter Theatre Center presents Regina Taylor's 'Crowns'

Adapted from Michael Cunningham and Craig Marberry’s tome of the same name — part coffee-table book, part cultural history — Crowns explores the special relationship between black women and their headwear. Hats dot the proscenium of Caite Hevner’s set, ranging from staid gray fedoras to glitteringly ornamented fascinators. As lit by Bradley King, they almost become an additional character, even when they’re not on someone’s head.

A heady history

But Taylor makes it clear that hat culture goes beyond merely looking good. “Adorning the head is a tradition from Africa,” an older woman tells Yolanda (Gabrielle Beckford, a real discovery), the play’s 17-year-old protagonist. “When I put on a hat, it’s with the spirits I’m communing.” Taylor links millinery to the church — a place of refuge for black women from slavery to the present day, where they can lay down their burdens and feel like queens.

That culture is foreign to Yolanda, who finds herself shipped off to South Carolina from Chicago after her brother’s murder. There she lives with Mother Shaw (Shari Addison), her grandmother and a pillar of the church community.

Dressed by Emilio Sosa in a green sweatshirt and camouflage-print pants, Yolanda stands out among the locals; her crown is a red baseball cap. She makes it clear she won’t “trade hip-hop for apostle gospel hymns.”

Through this frame, Taylor considers generational differences between a skeptical city-dwelling teenager and her devoutly religious rural elders. Although Crowns isn’t a strictly narrative work, these themes permeate, influencing its more pageant-like stretches. As the ensemble of church ladies and ministers attempt to take Yolanda under their wing, they also give her a sense of her history.

Hats off

Taylor, who also directs, can write a snappy line. My favorite: “I’d lend my children before I’d lend my hat. My children know the way home.” But she doesn’t settle for cleverness. Each story told by four phenomenal women soloists — Rebecca E. Covington, Latice Crawford, Stephanie Pope, and Danielle K. Thomas — has a deeper meaning that gradually becomes clear. Mother Shaw’s personal narrative, in Addison’s tender telling, broke my heart.

The production’s musical elements smartly blend religious and secular sounds. Yolanda communicates in a hybrid of rap, spoken-word poetry, and traditional musical-theater balladeering created by brilliant composer Dierdre Murray and beatboxer Chesney Snow. But gospel still has pride of place — especially when Crawford takes center stage to deliver a soul-stirring rendition of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”

Some production numbers can feel repetitive, and some of the ideas here come across as retrograde. An opinion voiced by a minister (Lawrence Clayton, a holdover from the original production and the sole male cast member) that links an uptick in violence to a retreat from the church seems simplistic in its moralizing. Yolanda’s denouement has the whiff of a miraculous conversion.

Still, its clunkier components cannot suppress the jubilant mood Crowns creates. A hat really can elevate the soul, even if you’re just watching someone else wear it.