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Boston Globe

‘Jaja's African Hair Braiding' deftly blends comedy and conflict

But a number of the shop's stylists and customers — and the actors who play them — are also ready for their close-up on Janie E. Howland's carefully detailed set. Sooner or later the play gives it to them. From left: Ashley Aldarondo, Dru Sky Berrian, and MarHadoo Effeh. Nile Scott Studios Advertisement They include Bea (Crystin Gilmore), an immigrant from Ghana who had entered into a green card marriage with a man from her church and dreams of opening her own salon; Miriam (MarHadoo Effeh), from Sierra Leone, who had to leave her young daughter behind when she immigrated to the US; Aminata (Kwezi Shongwe), originally from Senegal, who is caught in a turbulent marriage but seems to be vacillating on whether or not to end it; Ndidi (Catia), originally from Nigeria, who yearns to return to her home country and resume her acting career; and Jennifer (Hampton Richards), a customer who wants to be a journalist and is a model of forbearance, no matter how long it takes to braid her hair. Advertisement But the most compelling figure onstage at the Roberts Studio Theatre is one of the quietest: Marie, the 18-year-old daughter of the mostly unseen Jaja, an immigrant from Senegal. A valedictorian of her high school class, Marie is an aspiring writer who is running the shop for her mother. In Dru Sky Berrian's wonderfully precise, largely inward performance, we become aware not just of Marie's smarts and ambition but also of her anxiety — the submerged fears of someone who can sense the ground shifting beneath her. 'Jaja's' is comedic until it isn't. Bioh doesn't entirely finesse the transition to wrenching drama, as the play takes a sudden hairpin turn with a development quite literally torn from the headlines. But narrowly defined structural cohesion matters less by that point than your degree of emotional investment — and it's likely to be high — in the fates of Bioh's characters. In broad strokes, the late-in-the-play development in question does cast an illuminating retrospective light on much that came before it. You understand the precariousness of circumstance that underlies — or generates — the extravagantly expressive, seize-the-day spirit manifested by most of the salon's stylists and customers. In Williams, 'Jaja's' has a director who is clearly on Bioh's wavelength. Over the past decade-plus, Williams has displayed a knack for untangling the most difficult dramatic knots until she achieves lucidity. She's brought that skill to a varied palette of works that have been epic or intimate or somewhere in between, with a partial list including Advertisement Williams has repeatedly marshaled the collective force of a large cast while also ensuring that individual faces and voices are seen and heard, and in 'Jaja's' she does it again. Jaja, the salon's owner, an immigrant from from Senegal, is unseen for most of the play, but MaConnia Chesser makes her brief appearance a memorable one. On this day, Jaja is slated to be married at City Hall to a white man, of whom daughter Marie does not approve. (Jaja's dress is just one piece of the excellent work done by costume designer Danielle Domingue Sumi). Chesser's Jaja appears to be indomitable, but seeming and being are two different things. In the hair braiding salon, the employees and the customers, whatever their different personalities, are defined by their humanity. The same cannot be said of those whose goal is to turn their lives upside down. JAJA'S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING Play by Jocelyn Bioh Directed by Summer L. Williams Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company. At Roberts Studio Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts. Through May 31. Tickets start at $25. 617-933-8600, Don Aucoin can be reached at