Ghanaian-American playwright Jocelyn Bioh has already impressed at the Lyric Hammersmith with her cracking comedy School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play. Now she returns, with director Monique Touko once again at the helm, bringing the play that earned her five Tony Award nominations in 2024 – and it’s easy to see why it was such a hit on Broadway. Much like its predecessor, it is infectiously warm-hearted, with characters that are riddled with personality.
Set over the course of a single working day in the heat of summer, the play begins with the shutters of Jaja’s Harlem salon being hauled open. But Jaja herself is nowhere to be seen: instead, her 18-year-old daughter Marie (a brilliant stage debut from Sewa Zamba) has been left in charge, while her mother is off preparing for her wedding day to a white American. The daily grind continues as the staff arrive to braid hair, bitch and banter, offering us a small slice of their everyday routine.
In some ways a companion piece to Inua Ellams’s superb Barber Shop Chronicles, the play uses the salon space to host big conversations. As customers pass through its doors and settle into the chairs, the women open up about their lives in America, their journeys to get there, and their relationships and ambitions. Jaja’s longest-serving colleague, Bea (Dolapo Oni), has been married four times and dreams of one day running her own business. For now, though, she finds herself at odds with new temporary employee Ndidi (Bola Akeju), who seems to be poaching her long-standing clients from right under her nose. On the other side of the room, Miriam (a very sweet Jadesola Odunjo) tackles the day’s toughest braids while speaking tenderly about missing her five-year-old daughter, who still lives in Sierra Leone.
Touko brings the salon vividly to life, with conversations that ebb and flow. Paul Wills’ design paints the interior in bright orange, with hairstyle reference images cut out and plastered across the walls. Arguments flare up and are replaced again by the steady rhythm of work. Customers come and go: one particularly awful client makes her presence loudly felt before paying up, while another asks to be made to look just like Beyoncé. Occasionally, men (all played by Demmy Ladipo) pass through, but this is firmly a play centred on the female immigrant experience.
While he is never spoken about directly, the shadow of Donald Trump looms large. The women want and need the American Dream to become their reality, even if their experience of the country has not always been kind. Class divisions emerge too, with middle-class Black American women on work calls or fresh from internships at Vanity Fair, turning up for their appointments. The skill of Bioh’s writing lies in simply presenting a moment in time and place; it all feels profoundly natural, until a strange shift in tone at the end. It is rare that I would say this, but the script would benefit from being half an hour longer.
There are worse things than to leave us wanting more, though. Full of energy and passion, every wonderfully radiant minute in Jaja’s salon is something to savour.
