ajhlovestheatre

JAJA’S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING

by Jocelyn Bioh

directed by Monique Touko

Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London – until 25 April 2026

running time: 90 minutes no interval 

https://lyric.co.uk/shows/jajas-african-hair-braiding/

Playwright Jocelyn Bioh and director Monique Touko scored a big hit for the Lyric Hammersmith in 2023 with the delightful, thought-provoking School Girls: Or, The African Mean Girls Play. The unique combination of ferocious energy, life-enhancing humour and a hard-hitting examination of colourism ensured that the New York import (first seen off-Broadway in 2017, and due to receive a Broadway production this autumn) found resonance and a fan base here in London. Can lightning strike twice, with most of the same creative team collaborating on the UK premiere of Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, Bioh’s Tony nominated 2023 comedy? The answer, judging from the enthusiastic, highly vocal, reaction of last night’s audience for Touko’s vital production, is a resounding, overjoyed yes. 

The year is 2019, during Trump’s first presidential term, so the shadow of ICE hangs over the lives of the women working in the Harlem hair braiding salon that gives the play its title. Had Bioh set her script more recently, it would probably be more anxiety-ridden, but once again she has come up with a script that manages to be simultaneously potently political and cracking entertainment, with the emphasis on the latter. 

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding salon is brought to life in a gloriously vivid revolving scenic design by Paul Wills, augmented by Dick Straker’s eye-catching video work and Simisola Majekodunmi’s lighting. In this apparently safe space a team of women, mostly African immigrants, work, gossip, opine, confide, complain, and lift each other up. The wigs designs by Cynthia De La Rosa are particularly remarkable, as actors playing salon customers are transformed pretty much before our very eyes.

A party-like atmosphere pervades Touko’s staging: scene transitions are indicated by loud blasts of Afrobeat and undulating, booty-shaking choreography (lovely work by Kloé Dean), the fourth wall is periodically broken to acknowledge the howls of merriment and/or outrage coming from the deeply invested audience… The boiling hot Manhattan summer is convincingly evoked, and costume designer Jessica Cabassa has created some terrific looks. For the most part, the acting style is as bold and broad as the writing and the characters’ visual impacts, but rooted in just enough reality that when an emotional wallop is required, it registers most satisfyingly. 

Beyond the bickering and outrageousness, there’s a palpable sense of the precariousness of these women’s existences. If the genuine shock in the play’s final couple of minutes makes for a jarring change of tone, I think that’s partly Bioh’s point: that life can change irrevocably in a split second. It’s a shame that the show gets wrapped with almost indecent haste but equally it’s commendable that Bioh doesn’t try to parcel it all up neatly or to provide easy answers, and it’s a great tribute to her writing that in just ninety minutes of stage time, we come to care deeply about most of these women. 

The cast are clearly having a ball. Dolapo Oni is a formidable delight as Bea, whose low level grievance that Jaja’s shop was originally her idea informs her overall attitude. Her friendship with fellow stylist Aminata (played with irresistible comic relish but real heart by babirye bukilwa) is beautifully realised, as is her exasperated rivalry with the flighty, freewheeling Ndidi, a co-worker who seems to be stealing all her clients (Bola Akeju, glorious). Jaja herself appears only briefly, resplendent in her gaudy wedding gown en route to her nuptials with an unseen white guy whose main attraction may be the size of his wallet, and Zainan Jah plays her as a head turning force of nature.

There’s lovely work from Sewa Zamba as Jaja’s second generation African-American daughter Marie, terrified of telling her mother that she intends to pursue a career in writing rather than anything more lucrative. Jadesola Odunjo is equally fine as Miriam, the Sierra Leone-born salon worker whose kindness is matched by an unexpected fortitude and whose back story strikes a note of genuine pathos amongst  all the sound and comic fury. Three of the actors (Dani Moseley, Renee Bailey and the sole man, Demmy Ladipo) play several roles each, and a huge part of the fun is in observing their swaggering transformations.

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding isn’t quite perfect – it takes maybe a little too long to find its substance and dramatic meat, then deals with it too perfunctorily – but it’s a rollicking good time. As a celebration of the pervasiveness and hardiness of African culture and female empowerment and camaraderie, it’s an undoubted triumph. It also raises interesting, troubling points about what might be necessary to cling on to a life in a country that isn’t as welcoming as you might have hoped, which ensures that the play registers as something deeper and richer than just an urban African-American spin on Steel Magnolias. Touko infuses it all with ripe theatricality and comic aplomb. This feels like a real winner. Joyful.