Review: JAJA'S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING at Mark Taper Forum

On a steamy July day in Harlem, the women of Jaja’s African Hair Braiding open up their salon and go about their business. Someone is running late. Someone else arrives with gripes about a co-worker stealing her clients. An array of women – both those with appointments and walk-ins – range from everyday professionals to bundles of attitude. A few men also drop in, merchants peddling socks or jewelry. This being the business owner’s wedding day, Jaja herself is not necessarily expected, but her 18-year-old daughter runs the ship. As more than one person proclaims, it’s shaping up to be "one of those days,” a day like any other.

Or a day like no other. In setting her play during the summer of 2019, the quite prescient Jocelyn Bioh have been scanning today’s headlines. JAJA’S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING, completing a mini tour of regional theaters at the Mark Taper Forum following an acclaimed New York run in the fall of 2023, is a tender and humorous snapshot of a community and also a plea for community. Admittedly, several of these women possess a dose of the diva, but we come to learn that – like friends, sisters, human beings - when the unthinkable happens, they are present for each other. Even when distrust of immigrants is at a fever pitch. Especially then.

Under the direction of Whitney White (who has helmed every previous major staging of JAJA’S from the Manhattan Theatre Club to this five-stop co-pro), the Taper’s production is as funny and satisfying as it is timely. We spend 90 wonderful minutes as welcome captives of these fabulous ladies, seeing them gossip and snipe at each other, but rarely complaining to their customers as they work their artistic magic into their scalps. As the day moves along, we sway to their music, listen to their stories, shake our heads in disbelief at some of their antics and root them on. The candy-hued walls, chairs, stations and overhead TVs of David Zinn’s scenery establish the character of this business. The clothing worn by The Stylists (designed by Dede Ayite) are bursting with color while their own hair styles (thanks to the wig, hair and make-up of Nikaya Mathis) live up to the promise of what they can do for the women who sit in their chairs.

The salon workers include Miriam (Bisserat Tseggai), a young woman who left a loveless marriage and is looking to one day bring over her young son from Sierra Leone. Best friends Bea (Claudia Logan) and Aminata (Tiffany Renee Johnson) gab as much as they are actually do any work. Aminata has a layabout husband while Bea never misses an opportunity to carp about how much better the salon she intends to open will outclass this dump. Bea’s nemesis is the much-in-demand Ndidi (Abigail C, Onwunali) who has taken some of Bea’s clients.

A young journalist named Jennifer (Mia Ellis) books a session with Miriam that keep her in the salon practically until closing, and giving her a front row seat to all of the goings-on. A rogue’s gallery of six customers – many funny, some certifiable – pass through to test the endurance of the Jaja’s stylists. As enacted by the shape-shifting Melanie Brezill and Levonia Charles, these customers are good for nonstop laughs. “I really don’t like conflict,” a timid customer named Michelle remarks. Which means she is in the wrong establishment. Ultimately, Jaja (Victoire Charles) arrives wearing her wedding dress, to find music already playing…and she joins the dance.     

The shop’s quietest and most unassuming person is Marie (Jordan Rice), Jaja’s 18-year-old daughter, a whip-start student trying to go to college and maybe someday become a writer if she can convince her mother that it’s OK to chase a dream that won’t necessarily make her wealthy. Ndidi is from Nigeria, Miriam from Sierra Leone. Bea is from Ghana and Jaja, Marie and Aminata are from Senegal. Some of them have citizenship, others don’t, and the uncertainty of their status as immigrants casts a pall of anxiety over their lives. Jaja’s marriage means she’ll get her long-awaited green card.,  but Marie is a Dreamer who is working and going to school under a fake name. As one person remarks, for immigrants, the rules are always changing.  

Where is all this headed? To places both expected and surprising. Bioh has structured JAJA’S AFRIDCAN HAIR BRAIDING as a single-spaced workplace comedy, while also giving her women ample time to establish elements of their characters.  Logan’s Bea is a force of nature who can opt to use her power for good or to inflict some serious hurt. Johnson’s deeply conflicted Aminata lacks her friend’s sense of identity, but she’s getting there. Michael Oloyede morphs effortlessly between all four male characters.

Tseggai pops Miriam splendidly out of her demureness as she recounts an act of rebellion. And when she turns up, Charles’s Jaja is another voice of empowerment. Running this establishment in this city at this moment in time, you’ve got to have some steel in your spine.

Prior to its Taper run, this production has stopped in cities targeted by the Trump administration for ICE crackdown and National Guard troops. In between quelling all that civil unrest, some of these troops would do well to take in this enchanting and - yes - important play. They might learn something. Besides, Jaja’s establishment welcomes everybody.

JAJA'S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING plays through November 9 at 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles.