And Her Hair Went With Her
Weaving humor with insight, Zina Camblin’s world premiere at the Fountain Theatre poignantly explores the bonds of sisterhood and the bondages of stereotype from the seat of the beauty parlor chair. Donning wigs representing the various attitudes and characters that come through the door, this two-hander play starring TV and Tony Award-winner Tonya Pinkins and Cold Case regular Tracie Thoms brilliantly shine with seamless transitions while heaping dollops of individuality to every role.
The glue holding this character driven play together is the relationship between beauty shop owner Jasmine (Pinkins) and her assistant Angie (Thoms), a single mom struggling to discover her identity while pursuing her dreams of being a writer. In between hair appointments, they quiz each other for a pair of tickets to their favorite singer Nina Simone’s last concert, arguing over the details of her biography that reveal their differing attitudes about race and gender. Young and warily hopeful, Angie only hears Nina’s inspiring lyrics, jotting them down in her journal and taking Nina’s words as a call to arms for activism and change. Jasmine, however, only feels the music and the sensuality of Nina’s lusty voice. What should compliment the ‘other’ and each other only sharply divides and raises suspicion. It is through shared loss that they are both able to set aside their differences and discover they really are not that different after all.
Riotous and brutally honest, Camblin interjects the feminist dialogue through a series of clients that interrupt the growing debate and tension between Jasmine and Angie. These memorable and hysterical characters display their insecurities and the challenge of identity embedded in the side-splitting monologues and physical gags. There is the blonde wigged woman that is convinced she is white because her grade school teacher discovered she could read as well as the white children. “Your eyes have some green in them,” and Pinkins adds a delightful blend of lisping conviction to the outrageousness that is followed by an actress that lacks soul, and a “BOC” – black, obsessive compulsive convinced that unsanitary conditions are the white man’s attempt to expose African-Americans to disease and germs, a role that Thoms really lets loose, proving her comedic chops.
Although ridiculous on the surface, each character is the epitome of what they most fear and what otherwise cannot be said except in the confessional atmosphere of the neighborhood beauty salon. What makes something funny is that it speaks to a truth, and Camblin finds these levels of truth through these voices in a fantastic blend of wit, slang, and the physicality of hair.
Through a series of interviews with a lesbian, death row convict, Camblin balances this comedic play with a tenderness that evolves in the journalistic relationship between Angie and her urban Socrates. Ownership, identity, self-sabotage and sisterhood are all realized in the final hours of a life that cannot be spared, but can still spare Angie and her daughter’s future. Taking back her hair, Angie takes back her self, and earthy Jasmine quips as she joins Angie in the final pledge of selflessness and true sisterhood, “Call it the Nina Simone, and every woman will want it.”
Camblin uses the subject and ritual of black women’s hair to illustrate the stereotypes and labels black women give each other, themselves and the attempt to assimilate with hair into white culture. From weaves to straightening, natural and shaved, each style represents the exterior personality subject to judgment. “Self-hatred is the black woman’s poison,” and the extension of this is the hatred black women direct at each other. Reserving judgment for acceptance is the truly united front, and Camblin deftly threads this sensitivity without breaking the well laid tracks of laughter.
The set design by Sandra Burns is enhanced by the featureless mannequin heads sporting the wigs used throughout the show. All the women portrayed are onstage by the hair they use to identify themselves, and while practical for scene changes, it also adds depth and significance. Makeup and wig designer Judi Lewin deserves kudos for turning each hairpiece into a character all to itself.
And Her Hair Went With Her was selected as part of Lincoln Center’s Directors Lab and has received critical success in its debut at the New Jersey Repertory Theater and will also be produced at the Bailiwick Theater in Chicago this year. With this play, Julliard alum, Zina Camblin, proves she has arrived. Clear, conscious and connected, Camblin is a vital and exciting voice in the emerging generation of new playwrights.
“And Her Hair Went With Her”
The Fountain Theatre
5060 Fountain Avenue
(Fountain & Normandie)
Runs through June 15th
Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat at 8pm
Sundays at 2pm
323-663-1525