Last Updated on March 30, 2026
Joyful, award-winning Broadway play makes its UK debut, revealing touching individual stories underlying the immigrant experience
4.5 out of 5.0 starsThis timely play by Ghanaian-American playwright Jocelyn Bioh premiered on Broadway as part of the Manhattan Theatre Club’s 2023–2024 season and quickly caught the public’s attention. Its run was extended twice during its limited season, and a series of final performances was live-streamed owing to high demand. Jaja’s African Hair Braiding won two Tony Awards (it was nominated for six) and a slew of other nominations, and now a new production marks its UK premiere at the Lyric Hammersmith.
Paul Will’s excellent set design is brilliantly simple, comprising a revolving semicircle which pivots 180 degrees to either show the shopfront, complete with graffiti’d metal roller shutter; or the inside of the salon, with a central door through which characters can move between the inside and outside. Clever projections surrounding the set mimic New York streetscapes with their distinctive zigzag metal fire escapes.
The interior scene perfectly evokes a bustling African hair braiding salon in Harlem, complete with various African flags as bunting, photos showing off the various braids and cornrows available, and a TV showing endless repeats of Nollywood movies. The use of bright colours (also reflected in Jessica Cabassa’s costume design) underlines the care taken by the owner to make this a vibrant community space rather than just a shop.
Bioh has deliberately chosen an African hair braiding salon as the play’s setting for a variety of reasons. Bioh herself has intimate knowledge of such spaces, having spent many hours in similar braiding salons in Harlem, experiencing the long hours and hard work put in by the African immigrant women who work there. Salons everywhere are places where people let their guard down and share intimacies in a way that seldom happens in any other shop setting, so a salon is the perfect setting for personal stories to be revealed in a natural way.
These salons are also almost exclusively run by African immigrant women, and it is this group and their lived experiences that Bioh wanted to spotlight. Any other shop setting would not have allowed the extended interactions between the characters or enabled the theme to reveal as much of their personal stories. It is a keenly observed and very specific environment, and the play’s authenticity benefits hugely from it.
African hair has long been a symbolic battleground between African and European (in the widest sense) culture. In pre-colonial Africa, distinctive hairstyles could indicate your community/tribe, age, marital status or social standing. But during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, African enslaved people were forced to cut their hair short, stripping them of their heritage and culture. As a result of African colonisation by European powers in the 17th and 18th centuries, loose afros and braided hair were regarded as primitive and unattractive, which led to urban African women coming to prefer chemically straightened styles as a form of aspirational beauty (which spawned a multi-million dollar industry).
The gradual decline of colonialism in Africa as countries gained their independence in the 1950s-1970s, and the rise of movements such as Black Power in the USA and the South African Anti-Apartheid movement in the 1960s-1970s, has since led to a resurgence in the popularity of traditional hair braiding and other African styles as a celebration of a rich cultural heritage. Even today, African hair remains a battleground. Debates continue in some schools about whether afros, braids or cornrows comply with school hair policies, as do heated debates about whether it is acceptable homage or cultural appropriation for Caucasians to wear traditional African braids or cornrows. But it is remarkable that these ancient braiding traditions have survived eras and migrations against all odds, and this is thanks to the skills of the braiders that Bioh places at the centre of her play.
The play opens outside Jaja’s salon, on the day of Jaja’s wedding, at opening time, where we meet Jaja’s daughter Marie (Sewa Zamba) while she unlocks the salon together with braider Miriam (Jadesola Odunjo). The entire play takes place in the salon across the course of one sweltering summer’s day when the aged air-conditioner has given up the ghost and tempers flare as conflicts arise and subside between the four lively West African braiders, their customers, and at least one of their partners.
One by one, we meet the characters and their individual stories slowly unfold across the day, either through dialogue between them or with their customers. Marie typifies a second-generation immigrant – a naturalised New Yorker, full of eye-rolls at her mother’s advice and determined to do more with her life than run a braiding salon.
Reserved and kind, Miriam is from Sierra Leone and came to New York to make a better life for her young daughter, whom she left behind with her mother in Sierra Leone until she can afford to bring her to America. She speaks poignantly to a US-born customer about this, who is deeply moved by the painful reality of Miriam’s choices.
Bea (Dolapo Oni) is from Ghana and is the braider who has been at the salon the longest, referring frequently to the fact that she and Jaja started the salon together. Aminata (Babirye Bukilwa) is from Senegal and is a real firecracker of a character – larger than life, full of opinions and always ready for a dance in between customers – but also burdened by a feckless and manipulative husband.
Ndidi (Bola Akeju) is from Nigeria and completes the quartet of braiders as the feisty newest braider in the salon: skilled and quick and not scared to poach clients from slower Bea. Jaja (Zainab Jah) is the founder of the salon, a first-generation immigrant striver who appears only briefly in her wedding dress en route to her wedding to “Steven”, her white American boyfriend who is going to provide her with the final step to immigrant legitimacy: citizenship.
The cast is rounded out by Jennifer (Dolapo Oni), an American customer who spends the longest in the salon getting microbraids and acts as an empathetic ear for Miriam’s sharing of her immigrant experience; Dani Moseley and Renee Bailey who do a great job of each playing three different customers; and Demmy Lapido who similarly plays four very different male cameos including Aminata’s sleazy husband.
Via the back and forth conversations, jokes, arguments and gossip in the salon between the braiders themselves and between braiders and customers, the daily realities of migration are revealed: the pressure to succeed; the compromises it has required them to make; and the precariousness of their situations.
Marie is in the country on a relative’s “borrowed” papers. Jaja, despite years of living in the country and establishing a business there, is still on a visa and is pinning her hopes of citizenship (for herself and Marie) on her impending marriage. Bea is by turns resentful of Jaja’s success (“this salon was my idea too!”); fearful of losing customers to Ndidi, whose younger hands can braid faster; but supportive of her colleagues when the chips are down.
Miriam carries the quiet pain of homesickness and loss of family life with her as she talks of her daughter in Sierra Leone. Aminata is quick to criticise Bea for her four “marriages of convenience” but is clearly trapped in her own marriage for undisclosed reasons to a charming womaniser who only shows up to wheedle her hard-earned money out of her. And Nididi feels pressure to prove herself, constantly hustling for new braiding customers even as she harbours unfulfilled dreams of being a Nollywood actress.
The various customers that come through the shop provide comic moments (the bewildered customer caught between Bea and Ndidi, or the fabulous Beyonce blonde braids transformation) but also commentary on classism within marginalised communities. A difficult customer comes in demanding that only her own products and combs must be used on her hair (“I don’t know where your comb has been!”). And, one of Marie’s school friends blithely talks about her impending holiday to Italy and Vanity Fair work placement while Marie is trapped in her mother’s African braiding salon in Harlem.
The dialogue is tight, snappy and wonderfully rhythmic. All the actors have a keen ear for the rhythms of Africa layered over English dialogue (and proficiency in expressing the multiple meanings that different intonations of a single syllable “eh!” can convey!). Different vignettes are delineated by periodic bursts of Afrobeats, which had the cast exuberantly dancing on stage (and got the audience bopping in their seats). While the setting provides a sense of intimacy, the compressed timeframe of a single day provides a sense of urgency and allows small moments (arguments over clients, jokes, side‑eye glances) to build into emotional turning points. The urgency is heightened in the closing moments when a very topical immigration denouement is revealed (spoiler alert: ICE is involved).
The other remarkable aspect of Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (which Bioh herself has described as a love letter to braiding) is the way that braiding is portrayed, as an intersection between skilled artistry, physical labour, and cultural expression. Rather than going through the motions of pretending to braid, all the braiders do, in fact, do some hair braiding live on stage. This is thanks to Cynthia De La Rosa’s hair designs that showcase intricate styles (box braids, cornrows, microbraids) and her clever wigs that meant the styles could be partially created live on stage, with all the actors trained to do some of the braiding. The act of braiding live on stage becomes a tribute to the craft itself.
Director Monique Touko has maximised ensemble chemistry and used both the bold, witty dialogue and evocative musical/dance interludes to infuse the play with physicality, vitality and joy. The play is an exuberant celebration of immigrant African culture, humour, music and fashion, while also acknowledging the feelings of displacement, alienation and homesickness for culture, community and family “back home”.
But even more importantly, Bioh’s script for Jaja’s African Hair Braiding brings to life six very different African immigrant women, each with a different background, worldview, struggles and experiences, demonstrating that there is no single generic “immigrant experience”, but that it is a unique and personal journey. Grounding this band of fictional immigrants in everyday work, relationships, and humour succeeds in humanising the immigration debate by making the political deeply personal.
Jaja’s message could not come at a more timely moment in history. In the face of the world’s media and politicians attempting to lump together all immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers as a homogenous group hell-bent on sucking up their host country’s resources while contributing nothing, this play nudges audiences to look beyond the headlines and examine the nuances behind why people leave their birth countries and the sacrifices it entails. It is a bonus that it does so with sparky, witty dialogue, well-defined characters and contagious Afrobeats.
Jaja’s African Hair Braiding is showing at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until 25 April 2026.
Lyric Hammersmith Theatre
Lyric Square
King St
London
W6 0QL
Box office tel: 020 8741 6850
Box office e-mail: tickets@lyric.co.uk
Check out London Theatre Previews, January – July 2026 – Off West End
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