‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’ review: Comedy packs a political punch

The Harlem hair salon on the heart of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” Jocelyn Bioh’s exuberant office comedy, is bursting with gossip, petty fights, audacious style, dazzling hair kinds, full-body dancing and uncensored reality in regards to the susceptible lives of immigrant staff.

The play, which premiered on Broadway in 2023 in a Manhattan Theatre Membership manufacturing on the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, is as raucously entertaining as Lynn Nottage’s sandwich store comedy “Clyde’s” — and simply as sneakily weighty.

The manufacturing that opened Sunday on the Mark Taper Discussion board, its final cease of a multi-city tour, is directed by Whitney White, who obtained a Tony nomination for the Broadway staging. Ensemble brio, thrillingly in proof within the live-stream presentation of the New York manufacturing, remains to be the hallmark of a play that sees neighborhood as the one dependable reply to inconceivable instances.

Writer of “Faculty Ladies; Or, the African Imply Ladies Play,” Bioh thrives as a dramatist of enclosed worlds. In “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” she invitations us to spend a day on the titular salon on a sizzling summer season day in 2019. We’re there when Marie (Jordan Rice), the 18-year-old daughter of the Senegalese proprietor, and Miriam (Bisserat Tseggai), a quietly spirited worker from Sierra Leone, open the store’s gate within the morning and we’re there when Marie and the workers shut up on the finish of what seems to be a particularly troublesome day.

Lives are altered because the salon staff go about their day braiding the hair of consumers who vary from docile and caring to feisty and acrimonious. The ability of those stylists, whose fingers ache from their intricate labor, has made it attainable for them to make extra affluent lives for themselves of their adopted nation.

Extra affluent but no much less precarious in an America that underneath Trump 1.0 is being taught to resent and vilify international staff. Marie hasn’t been again to Senegal since she was 4 years previous and doesn’t even communicate the language. However she needed to attend highschool in New York Metropolis underneath an alias, and despite the fact that she graduated valedictorian from a elaborate personal faculty, she has no thought how she’ll pay for faculty, given her undocumented standing.

Jaja (Victoire Charles) is absent for a lot of the day for good cause. She’s getting married to a person Marie doesn’t notably like. Mom, nevertheless, insists that she is aware of greatest. And the purpose of the wedding, in any case, isn’t household bliss however citizenship. This growing plot line, nevertheless, stays within the background as clients flip up demanding to seem like Beyoncé or requesting micro braids, a labor-intensive torture for overworked palms.

Bea (Claudia Logan), a Ghanaian employee with sharp opinions, has been at Jaja’s the longest and has a way of possession in regards to the place. A troublesome co-worker, she’s not solely in everyone’s personal enterprise however she seethes with resentment when her clients defect to her colleagues.

The corporate of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” on the Mark Taper Discussion board.

(Javier Vasquez/Middle Theatre Group.)

The chief goal of Bea’s ire is Ndidi (Abigail C. Onwunali), a go-getter from Nigeria who’s sooner at braiding and way more nice to be round. Bea vents her spleen to Aminata (Tiffany Renee Johnson), however even this agreeable work buddy begins to really feel oppressed by her buddy’s judgmental nature.

Jennifer (Mia Ellis), the shopper who asks for the micro braids, sits patiently all day as Miriam shares deeply private tales whereas doing her hair. An aspiring journalist, Jennifer is an empathetic witness not solely to Miriam’s struggles however to the hardships and bravado of all the ladies within the store.

As anybody who has hung out in a hair salon is aware of, the human comedy is on full show as relative strangers actually and figuratively let their hair down. Intimate confidences aren’t solely allowed however inspired in what inevitably turns into a makeshift neighborhood heart, the place issues are aired and options are provided whether or not they’re welcome or not.

Bioh and White lean into the theatricality of an area the place Black ladies are allowed to uninhibitedly be themselves. Logan’s Bea, a diva with a revolving grudge, by no means worries if she’s being too daring or brash. She checks everybody’s limits, however her grandiosity is one thing to see.

Tseggai’s Miriam appears demure however delivers a wild monologue about her sad marriage and subsequent all-consuming affair that confirms you’ll be able to’t choose a e-book by its cowl. Johnson’s Aminata tries to get together with everybody, however when Bea begins criticizing her marriage to James (Michael Oloyede), a transparently manipulative heel, Aminata defends herself with the identical defiant vehemence she displays when breaking out in booty-shaking dance strikes.

Oloyede is so adept at differentiating the varied male characters he performs that I used to be shocked that there was just one male actor on the curtain name. Leovina Charles and Melanie Brezill additionally play quite a few comedian characters of various levels of outrageousness. Collectively, these versatile actors assist flesh out the Harlem neighborhood.

The manufacturing wouldn’t be what it’s with out Nikiya Mathis’ dazzling wig, hair and make-up design and Dede Ayite’s floridly vivid costumes. David Zinn’s scenic design units up store in a approach that locates the scene with out obstructing the play’s fluidity. Justin Ellington’s authentic music and sound, Jiyoun Chang’s lighting and Stefania Bulbarella’s video design contribute to the stream of a manufacturing that, realistically unfolding over the course of a day, takes leaps in time and temper.

When Jaja lastly reveals up in wedding ceremony regalia that she wears like a victory flag, the play hurtles towards its conclusion. The protections and advantages of her dream of citizenship are on the road in a system more and more hostile to outsiders, even these making a profound financial and cultural contribution to the widespread good.

Bioh wrote “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” years earlier than the military-style techniques of the second Trump administration went into authoritarian overdrive. However gifted playwrights know the right way to learn the indicators of a society in free fall.

Sizzling-button politics, it have to be pressured, aren’t foremost right here. The humanity of the characters is what issues most. Not all the personalities within the hair salon are straightforward to get together with. A few of them, actually, are fairly exasperating. However Bioh loves all of her characters, which makes it straightforward for the viewers to depart the theater feeling equally.