Vinson Cunningham reviews Jocelyn Bioh’s new Broadway comedy, in which West African immigrants navigate a Harlem salon fraught with cultural dissonance.
To Jaja’s daughter, Marie , who minds the shop and tends to its administrative business, Jaja is a mother with high standards. Marie went to a private school, where she got great grades and ran circles around her more stably situated peers. She was the valedictorian of her class, but now that she’s graduated she might not be able to go to college—she uses the name and the I.D. of a cousin she’s never met.
With each role, Bioh’s gifts are on display. She can make a real character appear—the kind that rests on archetype but always achieves the spark of individuality—in just a few seconds of talk or motion. She brings people into contact precisely at the places where they’re most vulnerable, or wounded, or willing to crack just the right joke to reveal an uncomfortable truth. Sometimes she clears out space and simply lets her people dance, or gawk at the television.
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