At Jaja’s: The Emperor’s New Braids

Judging by the chorus of rave reviews, it appears that Broadway has a new hit comedy. “A buffet of delights”; “riotously funny”; “a sparkling ensemble comedy” — those are just a few of the encomiums hurled at Jocelyn Bioh’s new play, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. 

I promised myself recently that I would try to stop being the skunk at the picnic — dumping on the shows that so often get overpraised by Broadway critics. But there’s such a gap, in this instance, between the play that the critics have described in their enthusiastic reviews, and the one that actually greets us at the Samuel J. Friedman theater, that I feel duty-bound to weigh in. Another case, I’m afraid, of the emperor’s new braids. 

In a single 90-minute act, we watch a day in the life of a storefront braiding shop in Harlem, where four stylists (all West African immigrants), assorted customers, and occasional street merchants wander in and out. The shop’s owner, Jaja, has taken the day off to get married (apparently for immigration reasons), leaving her college-bound daughter in charge, before making an appearance late in the play — the prelude to an unexpected dramatic climax. 

Now, this could certainly be rich material. Bioh, a Ghanian-American playwright (School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play) knows the scene well and obviously has great affection for it. “I have spent a very large portion of my life in hair braiding shops,” she says in a playwright’s note, “and want to tell you about them.”  

But what does she actually tell us? Surprisingly, for a play about the artistry of hair-braiding, we learn almost nothing about hair braiding itself: how it is done, what its cultural significance is, why one customer has to spend an entire day in the chair for micro-braids. Even the big reveals of the hairdos don’t have much impact onstage — since the intricate handiwork really can’t be seen by anyone sitting further back than Row D in the orchestra.

Nor do we learn much about the business itself. Is Jaja making a good living, or just scraping by? I was confused when new customers were told to step outside before being quoted a price. The reason is that the braiders are independent contractors, who negotiate prices in private, presumably to keep them secret from each other. I had to learn that from Jesse Green’s review in the Times, not the play.

But this is, more than anything else, a play about immigrants: “Their hopes. Their dreams. Their incredible stories of how and why they came to this country,” as Bioh puts it in her author’s note. Yet we don’t even get much of that— only one braider’s account of her romance with a pop singer back in Nigeria, who got her pregnant, left her behind to go on a European tour, and now (she hears) wants her back. It is pretty incredible — but only because it smacks more of a playwright’s romantic invention than real life.  

So what’s left to fill out the time? A little gossip about the men in their lives (most of them stinkers); some fairly obvious comedy business (when one bitchy customer gets ready to pick a braider, all of them try to look busy, to avoid having to serve her); and a few minor fracases that don’t seem to go anywhere. (Bea, the cranky veteran of the shop, accuses a younger braider of stealing her client and storms out of the shop. She returns later, accepts an apology, and goes back to work.) The play ambles along, without any real movement, or tension, or proper foreshadowing of the out-of-left-field (if thoroughly predictable) dramatic turn at the end. 

I don’t want to spoil the fun anyone might have at this slight, warm-spirited play, with its bright costumes and hard-working cast, under Whitney White’s indulgent direction. And I certainly understand the impulse of critics to lend support to works that bring diverse new voices (and audiences) to Broadway. But good intentions don’t necessarily mean good plays. And craft matters. Bioh is still working on hers, and she may well have some good plays ahead of her. But heaping praise on this lackluster effort isn’t good for anyone — not her, not the audience, and not the hopes and dreams of Broadway.