Review: At 'Jaja's,' where everybody knows your mane
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, November 22, 2024


Review: At 'Jaja's,' where everybody knows your mane
David Zinn’s beauty shop set is used in “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater in Manhattan, Sept. 9, 2023. Jocelyn Bioh’s Broadway playwriting debut, set in a Harlem hair braiding shop, is a hot and hilarious workplace sitcom. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

by Jesse Green



NEW YORK, NY.- Nothing says comedy to me like hot pink, and pink doesn’t get much hotter than the pink of the house curtain that greets you at the beginning of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” by Jocelyn Bioh. In the pale and staid Samuel J. Friedman Theater, a fuchsia drop depicting dozens of elaborately woven hairstyles — micro braids, cornrows, “kinky twists” and more — tells you, along with the bouncy Afro-pop music, to prepare for laughter.

That will come in abundance, but don’t in the meantime ignore Jaja’s storefront: gray and grimy and contradicting the pink. With its roll-up grille fully locked down, it’s telling you something, too.

What that is, Bioh does not reveal until quite late — almost too late for the good of this otherwise riotously funny workplace comedy set in pre-pandemic, mid-Trump-era Harlem. A kind of “Cheers” or “Steel Magnolias” for today, “Jaja’s” is so successful at selling the upbeat pluck and sharp-tongued sisterhood of its West African immigrants that the hasty dramatization of their collateral sacrifice feels a bit like a spinach dessert.

No matter: The first 80 minutes of the 90-minute play, which opened Tuesday in a Manhattan Theater Club production, are a buffet of delights. Even David Zinn’s set for the beauty shop’s interior, once the grate is unlocked and lifted, receives entrance applause. From that moment on, director Whitney White keeps the stage activated and the stories simmering at a happy bubble.

Unlike the Ghanaian private school students in Bioh’s “School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play” and the star-struck Nigerians in her “Nollywood Dreams,” the stylists at Jaja’s are independent contractors. I don’t just mean financially, although they negotiate their prices privately and pay Jaja a cut. They also operate independently as dramatic figures, their plots popping up for a while, momentarily intersecting with the others’, then piping down to make room for the next.

That’s fine when the plots and intersections are so enjoyable. Five women work at the salon in the hot summer of 2019, not counting Jaja’s 18-year-old daughter, Marie (Dominique Thorne), who runs the shop’s day-to-day operations. It’s she who lifts the grate and seems to shoulder the heaviest burdens. Her hopes for college, and a career as a writer, hang by a thread of false papers.

Romance and dominance are the main concerns of the others. As her name suggests, Bea (Zenzi Williams) is the queen, at least when Jaja is not around, and stirs up drama from an overdeveloped sense of personal entitlement. “When I get my shop, there won’t be any eating of smelly foods like this,” she snarks at her friend Aminata, innocently enjoying fish stew.

Today Bea is especially infuriated because she believes that Ndidi (Maechi Aharanwa), a younger, faster braider, is stealing her clients.

Meanwhile — and the adverb is apt because the subplots often echo the West African soap operas the women watch on the salon’s television — Aminata (Nana Mensah) is fuming over her scoundrelly husband, who wheedles her out of her hard-earned money and spends it on other women. Sweeter and quieter and more self-contained, Miriam (Brittany Adebumola) gradually reveals another side as she tells a client what she gladly escaped, and yet regrets leaving, in Sierra Leone.

The problem of men is a common theme: Even Jaja (Somi Kakoma), who eventually makes a spectacular appearance, is caught up in what may or may not be a green-card marriage scam with a local white landlord. But except for Aminata’s husband, the men we actually meet — all played by Michael Oloyede in nicely distinguished cameos — are kind and cheerful, hawking socks, jewelry, DVDs and affection.

Kind and cheerful is not the case with all the clients. (There are seven, played by three actors.) One is so rude just entering the shop that the braiders, usually hungry for business, pretend to be booked. Another client demands to look exactly like Beyoncé for her birthday; another is a loud talker. One mostly eats while Bea refreshes her elaborate do, a Strawberry Knotless Afro-Pop Bob. And Jennifer (Rachel Christopher) sits patiently in Miriam’s chair throughout, receiving long micro braids that take 12 hours and fingers of steel.

Never really forging these bits into a single narrative, Bioh makes comic music of them, sometimes with the set-it-up-now, pay-it-off-later approach and sometimes with a scrapper’s punch-feint-return. Without White’s orchestration of the rhythm — and the perfect timing of the cast, most of them making Broadway debuts — I can’t imagine this working.

Nor would it be as enjoyable without Dede Ayite’s sociologically meticulous costumes or the brilliance of the title characters. And by “title characters” I of course mean the hairstyles, rendered in before, during and after incarnations by Nikiya Mathis’ wigs, which seem to be holding a conversation of their own.

If the entire play had been nothing but byplay — the women in one another’s hair both figuratively and literally — I would not complain. Translating a popular genre to a new milieu and stocking it with characters unfamiliar to most American theatergoers, as Bioh did in “School Girls” as well, is refreshing enough when crafted so smartly.

But instead she has seen fit, again as in “School Girls,” to deepen and darken the story while providing a bang of activity at the end. Although abrupt and insufficiently resolved, it doesn’t come from nowhere. By the last of the play’s six scenes, all the women, but especially Jaja and her daughter, have something to fear from a president who has recently referred to some African countries with a disparaging vulgarism and complained that Nigerians allowed to enter the United States would never go back.

“OK, so you want me to go? Fine, I will go,” Jaja exclaims witheringly, in what seems like a direct response. “But when do you want me to leave? Before or after I raise your children? Or clean your house? Or cook your food? Or braid your hair so you look nice-nice before you go on your beach vacation? ‘Oh please miss. Can you give me the Bo Derek hair please?’”

“Jaja’s” is full of such treasurable moments, when the drama feels tightly woven with the comedy. And if the weave frays a bit at the end, what doesn’t? Like the Strawberry Knotless Afro-Pop Bob, it’s still a great look.



‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’Through Nov. 5 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, Manhattan; manhattantheatreclub.com. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

October 5, 2023

A Vienna museum mounts a monumental look at Robert Motherwell

Frans Hals and the art of laughter

Serpentine continues historic sculpture series with major exhibition by one of the world's most prolific living artists

A Paris museum looks back, and ahead

Fine Art Asia 2023, Embracing the New Trend in Cross-Collecting, 5-8 October

Fontaine's Fine & Decorative Arts Auction realizes $2.5-Million

Joan Baez: I Am A Noise, doc portrait of the legendary singer & activist, opens Oct. 6 at Film Forum

Galerie Emilie Dujat is now presenting the exhibition 'Tout doit disparaître' by Benoit Adam

The Approach exhibiting landscapes by artist John Maclean: 'New Paintings Part I'

'This Machine Creates Opacities: Robert Fulton, Renée Green, Pierre Huyghe, and Pope. L' at Carpenter Center

'The Anglophile and The Professor Early Books, Manuscripts and Ephemera, 16th-20th Century' by Everard Auctions

New Muck exhibits 'the grateful chair' and 'Pensar Y Poder' examine life's challenges through art

Review: At 'Jaja's,' where everybody knows your mane

The International Fine Print Dealers Association Print Fair announces 30th anniversary edition highlights

Just like in a mirror opens at Nationalmuseum Jamtli

First time in Cologne: Noble & Private Collections in the Palais Oppenheim

Starting new conversations about Arab art

Yavus Gallery opening 'Desert Songs' by leading indigenous artist Vincent Namatjira Oam

Keisuke Tada Solo Exhibitions at MAKI Gallery & Gallery COMMON

In Mexico City, a museum celebrates its first decade

Anime coloring pages

How Long Do Delta 9 Gummies Last?

How to Pick The Perfect Gift for Your First Girlfriend - A Guide for Young Men

Canada's #1 Trusted Source for Anabolic Steroids: Navigating Canadian Steroids with Confidence

Canada's #1 Trusted Source for Canadian Steroids

A Guide to Surgical Scrub Caps: Types, History, and Purpose

Maria Cecilia Conder Explores The Art of Art Collecting: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

Florist: Your Guide to Choosing the Perfect Floral Arrangements




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Holistic Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful