Bijan Sheibani’s exuberant production begins and ends with a party in which audience members dance with the cast or even go on stage for a quick trim. That seems entirely in keeping with the spirit of Inua Ellams’s invigorating play, which shows how barbers’ shops, run by and catering for African men, combine the roles of pub and political platform, social centre and soapbox. It makes the average white British male’s belief that you simply go in for a haircut look decidedly dreary.
Ellams switches between six shops in two continents on the day in April 2012 when Chelsea beat Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final. The main focus is on a London barber’s where a family drama is played out as a young hairdresser discovers the truth about his father’s imprisonment. It is, however, typical that the place is also a talk shop where cutters and clients debate the propriety of using the N-word, the subversive power of pidgin English and the supposed differences between black and white women.
The action embraces five other shops spread across Africa, but what is fascinating is how Ellams finds common threads in the geographical diversity: not only soccer, but a recurrent obsession with fathers and sons and even the same barroom anecdote told with local variations. What also hits one is the way the barber’s becomes a place where African men can safely let off steam. In Kampala, they talk about the way discrimination against gays is hitting Ugandan exports. In Harare, we see a generational clash about popular music.
Most telling is the rage of a man in Johannesburg who argues that Mandela failed his people and that the perpetrators of apartheid got off scot-free.
The role of women in African life is hardly touched on and you have to be pretty nimble to keep abreast of so many stories. But the acting is first-rate and Sheibani skilfully uses music and dance – especially a number in which the barbers flourish their towels like toreadors’ capes – to knit the episodes together.
Each man in his time plays many parts, and there are fine contributions from Cyril Nri as a patriarchal London Nigerian, Patrice Naiambana as a jaundiced Jo’burger and Hammed Animashaun as a randy youngster who never allows racial politics to impede his sex life. Co-produced by the National Theatre, Fuel and West Yorkshire Playhouse, it’s a richly enjoyable play in which the barber’s acts as a debating chamber where you shed your locks but regain your identity.
• At the Dorfman, National Theatre, London, until 8 July. Box office: 020-7452 3000. Then at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, 12-29 July. Box office: 0113-213 7700.
