Theatre review: Jaja's African Hair Braiding

Like a female version of Inua Ellams' Barber Shop Chronicles, Jocelyn Bioh's 2024 play Jaja's African Hair Braiding spans a working day in the titular Harlem salon where four African immigrant women compete for customers, tell stories and bicker: Miriam (Jadesola Odunjo) is the quiet one on the surface, cheerfully getting lumbered with a complicated job that'll take her all day, but able to open up and show a nuanced inner life when she connects with someone. Aminata (babirye bukilwa) is outwardly confident but her determination not to let her deadbeat husband James push her around is easily dented. Ndidi (Bola Akeju) is temporarily occupying a chair as the salon where she usually works, having clawed her way up to a full-time position, burned down. And Bea (Dolapo Oni) would be the group's mother figure, if she hadn't managed to piss all of them off at some point or other.

Theatre review: Unknown Rivers

Chinonyerem Odimba’s Unknown Rivers is a reaction against stereotypes about black women, particularly the “strong black woman” trope, which Odimba feels is an expectation that only adds more pressure to a group with a higher-than-average tendency towards mental illness. She offers as an example four women of colour, two of whose mental health problems are quite quickly apparent, but all of whom have had issues with depression at some stage in their lives. When Nene (Nneka Okoye) became a teenage mother she retreated completely from the outside world: She never leaves the flat, and looks after her daughter when she’s at home but her mother Dee (Doreene Blackstock) has to take her to school, the playground and anywhere else outdoors. Nene’s best friend Lea (Renee Bailey) has been visiting her twice a week ever since she got ill, and thinks the time might have finally come for her to brave the outside world.