The barber shop is bustling. Customers moved from queue to cutting chair, where they're fixed up then shown the mirror, before stepping out to make room for the next in line. Barbers talk to customers; even dance with them to the booming music coming out of the shop speakers. The hustle and bustle is in full flow. And 'Barber Shop Chronicles' hasn’t even started yet. These are just the on-stage scenes we’re greeted with as we head into the Royal Lyceum Theatre to take our seats.
'Barber Shop Chronicles' comes from the pen of Inua Ellams, a playwright and internationally touring poet who was born in Nigeria. The play jumps around the world, exploring the everyday confessional booth that is the barber shop’s chair, in an anecdotal, sketch format.
We open in Lagos, spend 10 minutes looking through a window into the life of a barber shop there, then jump to another barber shop in Peckham, or Johannesburg, Kampala or Accra, then it's back to Peckham, then Johannesburg, and so on. All of this happens over a single day on the stage - rooted in time by the upcoming Champions League final between Chelsea and Barcelona.
The all-male play explores how “African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world”. Ellams was inspired after discovering a project to teach barbers about the basics in counselling back in 2010. He said: “I was surprised that conversations in barber shops were so intimate that someone thought that barbers should be trained in counselling, and also that they wanted the counselling project sessions to happen in the barber shop. This meant that on some level the person who was organising this thought there was something sacred about barber shops.”
Barber Shop Chronicles is an incredibly fun, energetic play, with comedy at its core; comedy born from big characters and personalities; from the cheeky, playful interactions that come out of a fresh cut, from self-aware human vanity, stubbornness, or straight from the heart.
'Barber Shop Chronicles' comes from the pen of Inua Ellams, a playwright and internationally touring poet who was born in Nigeria. The play jumps around the world, exploring the everyday confessional booth that is the barber shop’s chair, in an anecdotal, sketch format.
We open in Lagos, spend 10 minutes looking through a window into the life of a barber shop there, then jump to another barber shop in Peckham, or Johannesburg, Kampala or Accra, then it's back to Peckham, then Johannesburg, and so on. All of this happens over a single day on the stage - rooted in time by the upcoming Champions League final between Chelsea and Barcelona.
The all-male play explores how “African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world”. Ellams was inspired after discovering a project to teach barbers about the basics in counselling back in 2010. He said: “I was surprised that conversations in barber shops were so intimate that someone thought that barbers should be trained in counselling, and also that they wanted the counselling project sessions to happen in the barber shop. This meant that on some level the person who was organising this thought there was something sacred about barber shops.”
Barber Shop Chronicles is an incredibly fun, energetic play, with comedy at its core; comedy born from big characters and personalities; from the cheeky, playful interactions that come out of a fresh cut, from self-aware human vanity, stubbornness, or straight from the heart.
The quick-cutting narrative takes on a host of big topics, though some storylines and barbershop narratives are fleshed out and continued in later segments, then brilliantly interwoven in the final third. There’s no preaching. Simply opinions, connections and debates, always rooted in humour. We engage in different takes on culture, politics, community and on success and masculinity around the world. Sometimes skirting around the issue, but usually deep diving into it. And most prominently, we explore different takes on these big topics in a space - the barber shop - which is one of the last in which people of different generations, wealth and political spheres still mix and talk.
Tied together with a booming soundtrack - including a healthy dose of Skepta - and some fantastic transition dance segments, 'Barber Shop Chronicles' is a deeply human experience; at times a critique of the way we interact, think and judge, and at others a love letter to it, brought to life by a cast oozing personality. Emmanuel Ighodaro and Demmy Ladipo's opening (top) is fantastic, the story of Anthony Ofoegbu's Emmanuel and Mohammed Mansaray's Samuel is a standout, and Demmy Ladipo's "bad boy" (above) is laugh out loud funny, but it's hard to fault any of the cast.
Sat in the barber shop chair the next day, after covering topics ranging from football to pet ownership to politics, I recommend the play to my barber, who says he’ll go along. “You’d be surprised at what people will tell you after you’ve cut their hair a few times,” he tells me.
The 'Barber Shop Chronicles' takes that truth, the intimacy of the barbershop, and its place as a sanctuary for many Africans across the world, and turns it into an in depth examination, and for the most part, a grand celebration, of human heart, spirit and community.
4/5
Stuart Kenny
Tied together with a booming soundtrack - including a healthy dose of Skepta - and some fantastic transition dance segments, 'Barber Shop Chronicles' is a deeply human experience; at times a critique of the way we interact, think and judge, and at others a love letter to it, brought to life by a cast oozing personality. Emmanuel Ighodaro and Demmy Ladipo's opening (top) is fantastic, the story of Anthony Ofoegbu's Emmanuel and Mohammed Mansaray's Samuel is a standout, and Demmy Ladipo's "bad boy" (above) is laugh out loud funny, but it's hard to fault any of the cast.
Sat in the barber shop chair the next day, after covering topics ranging from football to pet ownership to politics, I recommend the play to my barber, who says he’ll go along. “You’d be surprised at what people will tell you after you’ve cut their hair a few times,” he tells me.
The 'Barber Shop Chronicles' takes that truth, the intimacy of the barbershop, and its place as a sanctuary for many Africans across the world, and turns it into an in depth examination, and for the most part, a grand celebration, of human heart, spirit and community.
4/5
Stuart Kenny
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