A CUT ABOVE Barber Shop Chronicles
What is said in a barber shop stays secret – until it’s turned into a play. Tom Hunt and Ged Cann report.
Inua Ellams thought he’d left the ridiculous brand of African barber shop conversation behind him but it was waiting for him when he arrived in London. Now it is in Wellington, in the form of the Barber Shop Chronicles.
Actor Sule Rimi said the overarching theme of the play was how barber shops served as safe spaces for conversations that could not be had at home.
‘‘At any barber shop, you could have 12 guys in there, threequarters of which might not even be there to have a haircut. They are just there for the camaraderie and the banter,’’ he said.
What’s said in the barber shop stays in the barber shop, Rimi explained – until you turn it into a play.
Assistant director Stella Odunlami said as a woman, the play had provided her with a singular insight into what men talk about among other men.
The inspiration for the show originated in a flier advertising counsellor training for barbers.
While mostly set in a London barber shop, highlighting the conversations inside, the show travels to Johannesburg, Harere, Kampala, Lagos and Accra.
Its writer, Inua Ellams, defined the barber shop as part confession box, part political platform and part preacher pulpit.
Barber Shop Chronicles played in Sydney, Australia, where The Age reviewer John Shand described the show as ‘‘hardly a masterwork’’ but said it uncovered ‘‘a thick matt of issues and ideas that keep it buzzing in the ears like shears long after the final bow’’.
Those issues, he said, were of personal identity, migration, race and racism intermingled with geopolitics, jokes, tall stories, concepts of masculinity, petty squabbles and football.
Barber Shop Chronicles comes to Wellington via the Perth Festival, where Daily Review critic Humphrey Bower talked of entering to find the pre-show in full swing as audience members were invited up to the swivelling barber chairs on stage.
‘‘This loosely choreographed mayhem went on for about 10 minutes until it segued seamlessly into the opening scene of the play, with the cast coming together at the front of the stage to watch and cheer on a football match on an invisible TV.’’
The play, he said, ‘‘got me thinking about globalisation, race, masculinity and especially fatherhood in a world that – for all its apparent ‘connectivity’ – seems more and more fragmented and urgently in search of healing’’.
❚ Barber Shop Chronicles is being staged at Wellington’s TSB Arena until March 4.