Moonbox Productions

Crowns

By Regina Taylor

Directed by Regine Vital

April 11, 2025 – May 4, 2025

CROWNS is great theater, great energy, great community. CROWNS is simply great.

We entered into the black box hush of Arrow St. Arts in Cambridge on a drizzly Sunday afternoon. The theater had become a church, with an arc of seats facing a raised alter. We found our places, picked up our handheld fans with the photo of Matin Luther King Jr. (other congregants got Michelle Obama). We thumbed through the ‘Hymnal’ of lyrics to well-known Gospel songs. The audience trickled in. Mostly women, mostly Black, all better dressed than me and my companion. No matter. The space had a convivial vibe. We chatted. I told my neighbor we were in for a treat, as I’d seen this show twenty years ago at Lyric Stage Boston. She told me she owned 185 hats. Explained how each had special meaning. And tricky storge requirements.

The theater grew dark. From all directions came women, big women, powerful women, in brilliant African attire and elaborate head wraps, chanting loud and clear and strong. The forebearers in their crowns.

The plot of CROWNS is simple. Teenage Yolanda is Brooklyn born and raised. Her mother sends her to stay with her grandmother, “down South” after Yolanda’s brother is needlessly, violently killed. Grandmother is an old school, Bible-church-lady who wears a hat—a glorious hat—every Sunday. You can see where this is going: Yolanda bucks her newfound place until she embraces it. Thus, playwright Regina Taylor spends little time on plot, and devotes most of her energy to the glory of the Crowns.

Besides Grandma Em, there are four other church ladies, each with a slightly different take on the whys and wherefores of Black woman and their church-on-Sunday hats. There’s also a man—only one—who handles the task of being every man. Most often a good man; sometimes not.

CROWNS is a pageant of pride. Of these women’s connection to their hats and their god. And their work in the fields, and their work in the home, and their work for their families and their struggle for rights and their place in this world. It’s beautiful and inspiring and funny, and a visual delight. E. Rosser’s costumes and the fabulous hats are a Spring-spectacular of purples and yellows and reds and blues. Regine Vital’s flawless direction keeps our eyes ever focused on what really matters on stage.

CROWNS takes its religious roots seriously, with ample room for humor. I loved when the altar was transformed into Grandma’s dressing table, and we watched her put on her best face for the Lord, before going to see the Lord. Later, the altar bears solemn weight as eulogy after eulogy, the hat of someone dear…important…loved marks their passage to their maker.

On a dismal Sunday afternoon we came together. We sang, we clapped, we stomped, we fanned. We praised these wonderful women and their spectacular crowns. We left refreshed, inspired, brimming in fellowship and good feeling. Isn’t that what church—and theater—is supposed to do?