Jaja's African Hair Braiding Broadway Reviews

“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 can sometimes veer a little formulaic or presentational: In the single-scene appearance of Jaja herself, Kakoma spends most of her time standing directly downstage center (in, not to spoil anything, an absolute battleship of a wedding gown), facing out and delivering a rousing monologue about her right to call America “my country.” It rings clear and true, though I wonder how the same speech would have felt had White oriented Jaja as much toward her fellow characters as toward us, or what its effect might have been in a theater space without such a flat, front-on relationship with the audience. But this isn’t subtle stuff, and it’s not meant to be. Instead, it’s bright, generous, and forceful, and those currents carry the day. As Miriam says, perhaps speaking partly for her playwright, “No more time for quiet. I want to be loud, yeah? … Yeah. Very loud.”

It is promising when a theater set gets its own round of applause, and David Zinn’s vibrant and ingenious imagining for Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, booking to Nov. 5) on Broadway deservedly gets just that when the full interior glory of the imagined hair braiding shop in Harlem just off 125th Street reveals itself. Along with its bustling set of chairs, hair model posters, a Ghanian flag, and much, much Barbie-ish pink, Jocelyn Bioh’s play, set in the pre-pandemic summer of 2019 and produced by Manhattan Theatre Club, has all the energy and rich character interplay that her excellent award-winning 2017 play, School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play, possessed.

You don’t need to be a Black woman with braids to enjoy this play: heck, it might teach you something about the intricacies of a craft you only have observed from afar. But this play is also trying to reach a Black audience, long ignored by Broadway. It took producers a while, but there are signs in this still-young season that many have finally figured out that many of the audience members they want to reach are not looking for dramas about pain, aimed mostly at white audiences, but instead want affirmative experiences that offer laughs at human foibles and celebrate doing something really well, day in, day out. “Jaja’s” is a comedy about life as it is lived in this place, about community, aspiration and entrepreneurship. Mostly, though, it’s a show about immigrants getting the job done, and having fun doing it, one braid at a time.

The Ghanaian-American playwright (School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play) and director Whitney White (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord) have teamed up with executive producers Taraji P. Henson and LaChanze to paint a brilliant, emotive portrait of a seemingly simple day in the life of the sedulous West African women working at its titular Central Harlem hair braiding shop. As their day progresses, theatergoers will uncover a powerful tale about joy, dreams, societal and familial expectations, community, politics, loss, and sisterhood.

The playwright does at the end of this wickedly entertaining evening give in to the urge to highlight her characters’ plights a bit too baldly (sorry). Other than that, though, she and White so skillfully orchestrate her workplace comedy that you’re put in mind of the beauty parlor in “Steel Magnolias,” or, more potently, of a master such as August Wilson portraying the cabbies dispatched from a Pittsburgh storefront in “Jitney.”

The beauty of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” is the play’s ability to bring life to a seemingly mundane space. On the set designed by David Zinn, the salon’s walls are painted a deep, robust pink, with bags of braiding hair hanging along the walls. The television screen propped near the ceiling displays Afrobeats music videos or a Nollywood movie more enticing than anything seen in the theaters recently. Carts full of combs, braiding gel and oil sheen sliding over the floor feel familiar to any Black woman who has spent a good portion of her life in those worn leather chairs. Still, the play moves beyond the intricate hairstyles—though many are displayed here (the hair and wig design is by Nikiya Mathis)—to highlight the women at the heart of these shops. These are women boasting bold laughs and heavy hearts, who twist and manipulate hair until their fingers swell from the effort.

Make no mistake, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding is wildly entertaining. Bioh’s comedic skills are masterful, ballooned further by a talented ensemble. Mensah, in particular, brings a bracing dry humor, an excellent complement to the cast’s energetic antics. But the urge to sink into drama, particularly in the play’s last moments, is unnecessary. Bioh’s commitment to showing levity is refreshing. It’s a needed counterbalance to African stories that reek of debasement (often puppeteered by white people), and the increasing number of first-gen comedies committed to mocking the immigrant experience for a chortle. Jaja’s is at its best when its characters are allowed to be defined by indignation and empowered in their essential craft, not used to underline the trauma within the US immigration process.

Through tensions and extensions, Bioh’s day-in-the-life play never loses its comedic potency, and its ensemble shines throughout. When Jennifer (Rachel Christopher), an aspiring journalist who walks in at open to get micro-braids, everyone deflates with knowingly exhausted chagrin. By the time she leaves, almost at close, she, and us, can hardly believe it’s time to go.

Even though “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” takes place entirely in the hair salon, as does “Steel Magnolias,” the play is a series of short skits, as is “The Women”; and like that Boothe Luce play, many of those scenes lack a good button. They tend to dribble away dramatically rather than end with a comic bang.

Bioh contrives a heart-stopping development that threatens not only Jaja but daughter Marie. She contrives it but awkwardly. As she rapidly heads into ending the play, she leaves things on — forgive this — ice. And this leaves Jaja’s African Hair Braiding as insufficiently dramatic, though never less than amusing, as acted by the 10-member cast and directed by Whitney White, who apparently knows exactly what has a braiding outfit buzzing any and every day. The play does give a reviewer a chance to nod strongly at a creative team member too often overlooked: the hair and wig designer. That individual is indisputably crucial here. Check out, especially, what eye-catchers crown Bea, Aminata, and Ndidi. Awesome work, Nikiya Mathis.

And at the end of the day, despite some narrative clunkiness, Jaja offers plenty to celebrate. It's the Broadway debut of Bioh as a writer, White as a director, and six of the eight cast members. It's a passionate portrayal of Black womanhood in Harlem and all the diverse experiences that encompasses. And it's a love letter to the artistry of hair braiding, a millennia-old form of artistry that allows its participants to express themselves even as they transform themselves. Much like theatre.