You know you’re in for a special evening the minute you spot the hat shop in the downstairs lobby of the San Diego Repertory Theatre.

I’ve always loved hats, preferably the kind with great big brims. But girl, these are hats you don’t see at Macy’s because (as they say in the show) “We are queens and these are the crowns we wear.” You’ll find spangles and feathers, huge brims and small, ribbons and pearls on these hats made locally by hat designer Dianne Davis. Plan to arrive early and try some of them on, or buy one.

Inspired by the book Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats by photographer Michael Cunningham and journalist Craig Marberry, Crowns is a joyous parade of style, tradition and “hattitude.”

There’s a minimalist plot centered on young Brooklynite Yolanda (Monica Patrice Quintanilla), sent to stay with her grandmother after her brother is gunned down in the streets of Brooklyn. Noting that, “My mother never wore hats. She wore turbans – you know, head rags.” Yolanda is appalled by her new digs and stays sullen, comforted by radio speakers plastered to her head for most of the play. Eventually, though, she can’t avoid hearing her upbeat Southern relatives talk about their African roots, family history, the place of religion in their lives and of course, hats – nor can she fail to be touched by the level of caring she finds.

Directed and choreographed by Atlanta’s Patdro Harris, Crowns is a sort of Ain’t Misbehavin for the gospel set – really, it’s a gospel concert with some philosophy and history thrown in. Backed up by keyboardist e’Marcus Harper and percussionist Danny King, six women and one lone man (Ronald McCall) sing, dance and style in a 90-minute show that will have you tapping your toes and clapping along with the performers.

Peggy Ann Blow plays Mother Shaw, having a great time relating her responsibilities as the preacher’s wife and problems with front-row parishioners in short skirts. Karole Freeman plays the anti-big-hat lady Wanda (she’s in favor of demure little brims). The unrelated Lisa H. and Valerie Payton make their own sizable contributions.

Charyn Cannon gets my favorite hat – purple, with lots of, well, stuff on it. She also gets to sing “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” in a way that, as a character in another play reviewed here says, it stays sung.

Crowns isn’t so much a play as a musical portrayal of a lifestyle. There is some overmiking, which always seems to happen when actors are individually miked, but overall it works well, offering an upbeat show full of color, music, dance, joy – and fabulous hats!

Crowns plays through Oct. 31 on the Lyceum Stage at San Diego Repertory Theatre. Shows Wed-Sat. at 8:00 p.m.; Tues. and Sun. at 7:00 p.m.; Sun. matinees at 2:00 p.m.; Sat. matinee at 2:00 p.m. Oct. 9 only. For tickets: (619) 544-1000, or visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com for a link to their website.

They meet in Paris and fall in love over strong coffee and hot passionate words, debating the relative merits of Joplin v. Lennon.

Twenty years, one marriage and several books later, the conversation hasn’t ended for novelist Michael Waterman (Kurt Rhoads) and his teacher/novelist wife Linda (Nance Williamson).

On a Cassius Carter Centre Stage set that can best be described as minimalist in extremis – one table, two chairs and a diagonal crack across the play space – Michael and Linda examine love, death, secrets, writing, lies and of course the power of language – and try to come to terms with Linda’s diagnosis of a brain tumor. Michael baldly states the situation: “If the doctors are to be believed, in three weeks she will be dead.”

As these two super-verbal people confront that last undeniable event that cannot be talked away, Linda announces she is leaving him her diary and wants Michael to read it – afterward. And she asks permission to read his journal. He tears out one page, hands the rest to her, leaves her to read.

What she finds – many references to a woman named Abby – may or may not be explained by a dictum from Linda’s former writing teacher: “The lies begin when we lift the pen.”

In Fiction, playwright Steven Dietz has constructed an elegant pas de trois grounded in language and its profound power to move, hurt, elate, fascinate, confound and illuminate our lives. Questions are raised and answered … or are they? Events are explained … but is the explanation true? Fiction is one of those puzzles that will leave you wanting to plop down in a coffeehouse somewhere with some friends and talk about it.

Richard Seer directs in minimalist style, wisely staying out of the way of the words and ideas, which are the real meat of this play.

Williamson and Rhoads play off each other so naturally that it comes as no surprise to learn that they, like Linda and Michael, share a 20-year marriage.

They do not seem to be acting; it is more like you’ve been dropped into their living room.

Even the third wheel, Rachel Fowler’s Abby, is exactly right, and as ambiguous as her compatriots.

Four years ago, another Dietz play, Private Eyes, left many theatergoers hoping to see more by this talented playwright. Fiction does not disappoint.

Fiction plays through Oct. 31 at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage. Shows Tues., Wed., Sun. at 7:00 p.m.; Thurs., Fri., Sat. at 8:00 p.m.; Sat. & Sun. matinees at 2:00 p.m. For tickets: (619) 23-GLOBE, or visit www.gaylesbiantimes.com for a link to their website.

Nobody gets it right every time – not even Sean Murray, whose extraordinary run of great productions at Cygnet Theatre ended last night with the opening of Escanaba in da Moonlight.

Escanaba is a silly sitcom-level piece by actor and Michigan native Jeff Daniels about the opening of deer season in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. You know, deer season: “like Christmas with guns.”

Intermittently narrated by patriarch Albert Soady (David Gallagher), this is about the hunter’s coming-of-age trial: getting that first buck. It seems that Reuben Soady (Kenny Taylor) has reached the advanced age of 35 and is in danger of hitting the family record book as the oldest Soady “without venison.”

Aside from the fact that it’s nearly impossible to care about this, the script would even have us believe that fart jokes, falling out of bed and the consumption of quantities of beer and pasties (the meat pies, not the stickers on go-go dancers) are not only the highlight of these guys’ existence, but the stuff of absorbing theater.

Depite Murray’s properly disheveled set design and Gallagher’s no-nonsense Garrison Keillor-style narration (Albert is the only character I might want to meet), the best I can say is that the characters are self-consciously quirky and the whole is mainly a shrug.

Maybe I’m a sorehead, or maybe you have to be or be around a hunter or a Yooper (from the Upper Peninsula) to appreciate this, but I found the other characters (J. Michael Ross’ mumbly Jimner, Manny Fernandes’ rosary-fingering Remnar and David Radford’s twitchy Ranger Tom) cartoonish, the situation a snore and the script almost insultingly jejune. But I must also report that many in the audience were laughing, some heartily – I guess I just don’t get it.

Escanaba in da Moonlight plays through Nov. 7 at Cygnet Theatre. Shows Thurs.-Sat. at 8:00 p.m.; Sun. at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.