When you walk into a Black hair salon, you're not just getting a weave, a perm or braids. You're getting baptized or cleansed. You're entering a community's embrace, and you're channeling your roots and your power.
Gardley's world premiere... has the muscularity of midcentury drama and the snappy dialogue of your favorite TV show. If it also sprawls... it nonetheless stands as another example of how Oakland Theater Project is the most ambitious and audacious little theater company in the region.
The heart of the play... concerns beauticians Adeline and Laney and Laney's children, Mac and Laurel. It's the eve of Obama's election, and the salon is in dire straits, despite being the neighborhood's living room and sanctuary.
But given all the weight bearing down on them - the looming 'Starbuckses' of gentrification, the force of family personalities sharpened to the quick, stolen land in the distant past - is any panacea too good to be true?
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