Jocelyn Bioh’s funny, poignant “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” onstage at Berkeley Repertory Theatre starts at such a fever pitch, it’s initially hard to follow. First thing in the morning, shop manager Marie (Jordan Rice) rushes to roll up the grate of her mother’s Harlem hair parlor, talking with nonstop teenage energy to an early-arriving worker, Miriam (Bisserat Tseggai).
Then the other professional braiders show up to take their stations, sporting an array of hairstyles (the complicated and fascinating hair and wig design is by Nikiya Mathis) and accents from Senegal, Sierra Leone and a host of other West African countries. Soon enough, the characters become multi-layered individuals, each one beautifully developed by the excellent cast.
The array of braids for their customers, each set varied and miraculously whipped up during the running time of the play, is a feat of theatrical magic. (One satisfied customer declares herself a Beyoncé lookalike in her new, flamboyant blond braid.)
The braiders’ separate and distinct personalities slowly emerge: Aminata (Tiffany Renee Johnson) is perpetually on her cellphone, fighting with her cheatin’ husband. Quiet Miriam has a heartbreaking story to tell. Tough-minded, outspoken Bea (Awa Sal Secka) is clearly the difficult one. And so on.
By the 90-minute play’s end, these characters—their inherent contradictions and complexities, their fears, their dreams—reveal themselves in unexpected ways. The customers (regulars, the newbie and the neighborhood salesmen, plus Aminata’s impassioned husband played impeccably by Kevin Aoussou) who drift through the shop over the course of one long, hot summer day are illuminated, too.
When, late in the play, the titular Jaja (Victoire Charles, a vision in a white wedding gown (the colorful and varied costumes down to Bea’s shaggy red bedroom slippers are by Dede Ayite) finally makes her appearance, the temperature in the small shop changes. The change is envisioned dramatically by director Whitney White with a full accompaniment of dazzling-colored lights. As happens off and on throughout, the hairdressers, working their way through moments of frustration and hope, break into dance, and Jaja’s entrance is cause for just such an ecstatic moment.
Still, despite fine acting all around, some of the customers feel like one-dimensional cartoons, which makes for an uncomfortable tonal contrast with the braiders, whom we grow to love.
At a time when the status of immigrants in our country is severely threatened, the plight of some of these workers feels all too real. Playwright Bioh strikes an even-handed balance between the everyday ups and downs of the workers—the tension of their interactions, the concerns each has for her own life’s trajectory—and ultimately finds a way to quietly, delicately, dramatize their sisterhood.
When truculent Bea says, at the end, “Hey, it’s all going to be OK,” you want to believe her.
Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s “Jaja’s “African Hair Braiding” continues through Dec. 15 at Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $25 to $151 at berkeleyrep.org.
The post Review: Berkeley Rep’s ‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’ a sensitive, fun look at sisterhood appeared first on Local News Matters.