Tony-award-winning play Jaya’s African Hair Braiding makes its London debut for a strictly limited season at the Lyric Hammersmith.
Set in a hair braiding salon in Harlem, Jocelyn Bioh’s 2023 play is a dazzling look at love, life, and community through the experiences of seventeen characters in a 12-hour working day.
Although this is Jaja’s salon, we don’t meet her straight away as this is her wedding day to a white man, the day she can finally say she “is an American”. Her daughter Marie (Sewa Zamba in her professional stage debut), in the country under another identity, is holding the fort. Veteran braiders Bea (Dolapo Oni) and Aminata (babirye bukilwa) are the mother figures and the most opinionated, gossiping and clashing.
New braider Ndidi (Bola Akeju) and skilful microbraider Miriam (Jadesola Odunjo) represent the younger generation: the former getting attention from the regular street vendor; the latter opening up about a lost love in Sierra Leone and the desire “to be loud”.
The customers come and go throughout the day, offering glimpses of their hopes, fears and dreams. Jennifer (Karene Peter) is the only one there for the whole shift, slowly transforming before our eyes.
The ensemble of Renee Bailey, Dani Moseley and Demmy Ladipo portrays a variety of customers and visitors across the day, from a nervous lady having the nerve to change braiders, to a demanding business type, and a permanently fatigued fusspot.
Paul Wills’s set, shifting on a turntable, offers the salon in its exterior grime and its bright and buzzing interior, with corner-mounted TV churning out YouTube videos – which sometimes spread to the whole back wall – and the paraphenalia of a thriving hair business.
Cynthia De La Rosa’s wig designs are remarkable, and as they are fixed live on stage, the transformations are breathtaking. This is a safe space for Black women to reveal themselves as they are, inside and out, as the wigs and hats come off.
Each woman has her story. For Jaja (Zainab Jah), her big entrance perhaps inevitably leads to a change in focus in the last few minutes. Marie has to deal with a high-flying classmate who snaps a picture of her as she leaves, presumably to mock her online.
Aminata’s husband is seen to hold power over her, belied by her confidence at work, while Bea simmers in quiet resentment at the bad luck life has dealt her.
Bioh’s play, like her earlier work School Girls (also seen at Hammersmith), is very much about sisterhood, community, and support. When a woman walks through the door of Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, however long she stays, she is in a place where she can relax, dance, read, work, hug, unload, or sleep.
Tempers may rise for a moment, but there is always love in the room. Monique Touko directs her cast impeccably, and they have such close chemistry together.
Jaja’s African Hair Braiding sparkles and shines where it needs to, offering big laughs and moments of poignancy.
The final scenes might leave the show feeling a little unfinished, but there is scope to pick up with these women again, and they are all people I would love to see showcased in a future production. If not, we hope their lives continue to thrive.
I’m giving this 3 and a half stars.
Jaya’s African Hair Braiding continues at Lyric Hammersmith until 25 Apr with tickets here.
Photo credit: Manual Harlan