Claudia Logan, Bisserat Tseggai and Mia Ellis (Photo by Javier Vasquez)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Mark Taper Forum
Through Nov. 9
RECOMMENDED
Produced on Broadway in 2023, Jocelyn Bioh’s Tony-nominated play, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, touches down in Los Angeles for its final stop after a long tour.
Bioh, who is herself American Ghanian, approaches her material from an intensely personal perspective. Set in a Harlem hair-braiding salon in 2019, the play unfolds against the backdrop of Trump-era ICE raids — crackdowns that left many immigrant communities living in daily fear. (Of course, the first months of the current Trump administration have seen those raids amped up to flagrantly unlawful levels, with the undocumented and American citizens alike snatched off the streets without habeas corpus or legal representation.)
However, if you were expecting cowering victims hiding in corners waiting for the axe to drop, think again. Jaja’s hair-braiders are lively, life-loving, capable individuals who braid hair until their hands bleed, all in pursuit of the American dream. In fact, despite the constant threat of danger just outside Jaja’s place, the tone of Bioh’s play is riotously, triumphantly funny.
Like many great ensemble plays, Jaja’s pushes its disparate individuals into a family—women bound not just by labor, but by love and survival. However, Jaja’s tone goes beyond mere family feeling. Indeed, the sisterly bond among these women becomes, in itself, a compelling feminist statement.
The performers are uniformly spectacular, as is the masterful direction by Whitney White, who was Tony-nominated for staging Jaja on Broadway. That excellence extends to the design elements — David Zinn’s set, Dede Ayite’s costumes, Jiyoun Chang’s lighting, and Justin Ellington’s original music and sound, all exceptional. Stefania Bulbarella’s video design — which features hilarious “Nollywood” soap opera and music segments specifically designed for the production, also stands out, as does Nikaya Mathis’s hair, wigs, and makeup design —particularly the lovingly braided wigs, perfectly emblematic of the importance of hair in Black women’s culture.
It’s a hot July in Harlem, near 100 degrees, and the single unit air conditioning in Jaja’s is malfunctioning. Marie (Jordan Rice) is running the place in the absence of her mother, Jaja (Victoire Charles). It’s Jaja’s wedding day, and she’s hoping that her marriage to her white American admirer will get her the longed-for but ever elusive green card — an unassailable base for herself and her daughter to enjoy stability and prosperity, free from fear.
Jaja takes great pride in her brainy daughter, whom she struggled to give an elite private school education at considerable expense. Pushy and single-minded, Jaja thinks that Marie is college-bound, but Marie, an aspiring writer, has other plans.
Jaja’s old friend Bea (Claudia Logan) was supposed to partner with Jaja in the salon. Money issues intervened, and Bea now works as an employee on Jaja’s hair braiding staff, much to Bea’s simmering resentment. She vents her ongoing irritation to her friend and confidante Aminata (Tiffany Renee Johnson), and her annoyance extends to Aminata’s dead-beat husband, James (Michael Oloyede, excellent in multiple roles), whom Aminata refuses to leave. Meanwhile, Bea’s customers have been defecting to newly hired hair braiding whiz Ndidi (Abigail C. Onwunali), which does not lighten Bea’s mood one bit.
Hard-working young stylist Miriam (Bisserat Tseggai), forced to leave her young daughter behind in Sierra Leone in order to immigrate, is deceptively demure, but her placid exterior conceals fiery depths. She confides her moving story to her customer Jennifer (Mia Ellis), a kindly Black American woman who wants to make her mark in journalism, but whose own American dream has so far eluded her.
The elusive Jaja, clad in her wedding dress, finally makes her appearance late in the play—not so much entering the salon as bursting into it in a shimmering whirl of gorgeous white satin. In White’s wily directorial choice, Jaja faces front for much of her dialogue, which gives the illusion that she is directly addressing the audience. It’s a fiery speech, and in that single, penultimate scene, Jaja articulates not only her hopes for the future, but the challenges she has faced in America’s callously inequitable system, which exploits her hard work without dignifying her efforts—a speech that later takes on retrospective poignancy.
Melanie Brezill and Leovina Charles round out the cast in multiple roles — crowd-pleasing comical turns that elicit appreciative roars from the audience. The performers’ sometimes thick West African dialects can be challenging. Lines are lost, and the audience’s raucous reactions, at least on opening night, augmented the problem. However, that doesn’t detract from the life-affirming vibrancy of this play and these undaunted, yearning individuals.
This production offers a radiant counterpoint to America’s cruel climate of xenophobia—a vivid reminder of the rich gifts that immigrants have always contributed to this nation’s story.
Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. Tues.-Thur., 7:30 p.m.; Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m., Sun., 1 and 7 p.m., thru Nov. 9. https://CenterTheatreGroup.org. 90 minutes, no intermission.
