Cult comedy is a cut above
Joyous barber-shop drama with all the trimmings
WHO knew how desperate we would become for a haircut during lockdown? Happily for me, I am blessed with a business consultant wife who’s also a have-a-go hairdresser.
There is, however, one crucial aspect of barbering that few spouses can cover: psychiatry.
Like a lot of men, I go to the barber for a moan as much as a trim. To sound off about the world and all the injustice in it.
That’s surely why Barber Shop Chronicles was such a hit last year at the National Theatre, and again on tour. A joyful, self-satirising comedy about barber shops — specifically for black men — it captures the way the hairdresser’s is where we all go for therapy.
Halfway between a sketch show and a sitcom, it’s not a conventional story.
THe procession of characters from Lagos to South London are wonderfully watchable as they spar with each other on the subjects of parenting, language, sex, paternity and what they think it means to be a ‘strong black man’.
Inua ellams’s script gets a little bogged down in the second half and could do with more plot to explore themes of colonialism and absent fathers.
But Bijan Sheibani’s production is great fun, and there are lots of larger than life motormouths — including Hammed Animashaun as an opinionated Nigerian loverman. I still hope ellams’s sequel will be a version for women — the Mani-Pedi Chronicles, perhaps.
n ANDReW Lloyd Webber’s Cats had its own kind of barber shop bust-up when it was made into the much-ridiculed super-celebrity film last year. But at least that had the benefit of whizzy computer animation.
In the 1998 recording of the stage show, which Lord Lloyd-Webber is cautiously making available free for 24 hours from 7pm tonight, it’s more like an eighties mash-up: Doctor Who meets Pan’s People from Top Of The Pops, in cathode ray tube format. If you can remember either of those shows, you’ll know whether you want to repeat the experience.
either way, the moulded junkyard set and skin-tight feline costumes — with leg warmers — have a touch of glam rock about them, and at least the children’s party face paint doesn’t run.
More crucially, elaine Paige, in a mangy mink (inset right), shows us how to yodel with restraint in the show’s biggest number, Memory. But this is very much for Cats diehards. Personally, I sit squarely on the dog side of the fence.
MUCH more interesting, from my point of view, was Simon McBurney’s one-man psychedelic re-enactment of Loren McIntyre’s 1969 trip to visit the Mayoruna tribe in the Amazon jungle.
Intending to take photos for National Geographic magazine, McIntyre lost not only his belongings, including his watch and camera, but also his sense of self.
As a result, he wound up being co-opted into one of the tribe’s shamanic rituals involving toad venom and mind travel.
Yes, it’s all deeply weird. But it remains one of the most extraordinary theatrical experiences of my life.
McBurney is a consummate performer, flying solo with spooky 3D sound and multiple characters to subvert our own sense of self. In the context of a lockdown this is either a very good idea, or a very poor one.
There is, however, a funny side to it, thanks to McBurney’s sense of mischief, and his young daughter’s frequent interruptions. If you decide to give it a go, it’s best enjoyed with high-quality headphones.