The double-Tony-winning Broadway hit Jaja’s African Hair Braiding has arrived at the Mark Taper Forum, the nationally touring production treating L.A. audiences to Jocelyn Bioh’s potent mix of hilarity, humanity, and heart.

Bioh’s Best Play Tony nominee gets its title from the Harlem salon run by Senegalese small business entrepreneur Jaja (Victoire Charles), where stylists from Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone spend their days transforming their clients from ordinary to extraordinary thanks to a seemingly infinite variety of braided dos.

And what an eclectic and electric bunch they are.

 40something Bea (Claudia Logan) has been there the longest, and if things had gone the way she’d hoped and planned, she’d be running the salon instead of Jaja, and she wouldn’t be losing clients to Ndidi (Abigail C. Onwunali), who’s younger and snappier and truth be told probably a good deal better at her job than Bea is these days.

 Fellow drama queen Aminata (Tiffany Renee Johnson) may not always see eye to eye with the oft aggrieved Bea, but whenever there’s a gossipy tidbit to be shared, you can count on these two to salivate over it together.

Not so Miriam (Bisserat Tseggai), who’s got other things on her mind than spreading tasty tidbits, namely the very young daughter she’s left behind in hopes of earning enough money to give her child a better life in America.

 Serving as receptionist at Jaja’s is her 18-year-old daughter Marie (Jordan Rice), who’s basically never known any country but the United States yet could lose it all should ICE come calling.

And then there are the customers.

Aspiring journalist Jennifer (Mia Ellis) plans on being there for the day going from a short natural do to a headful of full-length micro braids.

Others, like Chrissy (Melanie Brezill), who intends to leave the salon a dead ringer for Beyoncé, and gossipy businesswoman Shelia (Leovina Charles), just two of the six characters Brezill and Charles dazzle us with, arrive and depart at various shorter intervals as do Michael Oloyede’s four male characters, among them Franklin, aka “The Sock Man,” who show up with an endless assortment of items to sell, and Nigerian “Jewelry Man” Olu, whose crush on Ndidi is pretty much impossible to hide.

Over the course of a 12-plus-hour day, playwright Bioh, her fellow Tony nominee director Whitney White, and an all-around fabulous touring cast (joined by original Broadway star Oloyede for the Taper run) allow us to get to know these women and men up close and so personally that when various crises pop up, including an 11th-hour earth-shaker ripped from this morning’s headlines, we have come to care about these women, no longer “the other,” but our friends, our neighbors, our fellow Americans, no matter where their passports were issued or what their legal status in the United States might be.

 Bioh’s characters’ variety of African accents can at times prove challenging to decipher, but we get what they’re saying, and what they’re feeling, and we rejoice in their triumphs large and small and ache for the vicissitude they face as they forge new lives for themselves in a country that’s not always the most hospitable of places.

Jaja’s African Hair Braiding looks sensational too thanks to its original Broadway designers, including a Tony-nominated David Zinn, whose set transports us from the Taper to the most colorful and hair care paraphernalia-filled of braiding salons, gorgeously lit by Jiyoun Chang.

 Dede Ayite’s vast array of equally vibrantly-hued costumes won her a Tony statuette, Nikiya Mathis’s hair and wig designs are so spectacular, she was awarded a special Tony for designing them, and Stefania Bulbarella and Justin Ellington got a Best Sound Design Tony nomination as well.

Jaja’s African Hair Design’s national tour features additional direction by Manna-Symone Middlebrooks. Stefania Bulbarella is video designer. Jacqueline Springfield is voice and dialect coach. Brillian Qi-Belle is production stage manager and Jihee Jenny Park is stage manager.

Erica A. Hart, CSA is casting director. Casting is by Kelly Gillespie, CSA and David Caparelliotis, CSA. Sadé Ayodele, assistant director Debora Crabbe, Vandous Stripling II, and Donae Swanson are understudies.

 Though we’ll have to wait until February of next year to welcome a locally-cast Here Lies Love to arrive at the Forum, I can’t really complain about Jaja’s African Hair Braiding being a New York import. When a production is as funny and as powerful and as moving as this one, Los Angeles audiences have more than enough reason to stand up and cheer.

Mark Taper Forum, 35 N. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles.
www.centertheatregroup.org

–Steven Stanley
October 5, 2025
Photos: Javier Vasquez/Center Theatre Group

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: Center Theatre Group, Jocelyn Bioh, Los Angeles Theater Review, Mark Taper Forum