Amber Redmond and Haley Johnson in Don’t Touch My Hair (Don Ipock)
Unicorn Theatre’s current production of Don’t Touch My Hair deals with some extremely heavy subject matter, from slavery to sexual assault to modern racism and cultural appropriation. The thing is, it’s also riotously funny. Douglas Lyons’ script threads a remarkable needle, delivering sharp social commentary while eliciting nearly nonstop laughs.
Eemani (Amber Redmond) and Jade (Haley Johnson) are best friends and roommates. At the start of the play, they share a joint and vent about their problems. By the end, they have traveled through time and harnessed individual superpowers. It’s a journey, to be sure.
The women have a lot to complain about. Jade’s dating life is in a massive rut following her most recent bad first date with “Halitosis Harold” (Sam Cordes). Eemani, an aspiring fashion designer, has just returned from a job interview for a Black-facing company that turns out to be run by a white woman (Ashlee LaPine)—the kind of “well-meaning” white woman who seems to be comprised entirely of microaggressions.
As Jade and Eemani smoke and decompress, something in their potentially funky weed sends them through time. Jade wakes up as “Angaleen,” a slave in the home of Isabella and Theodore Willwright (LaPine and Cordes again, respectively). Eemani is with her, but fully invisible to everyone but Jade. In this hallucination (if that’s what it is), the women have to navigate new, heightened abuses. Jade is belittled and beaten by Isabella, and both she and Eemani have to fight to help another enslaved man, Alick (Rufus Burns), escape the regular sexual assault Isabella commits against him.
Still, in many ways, the obstacles these women are up against are supercharged versions of the same indignities they suffer at home. They all stem from an oppressive sense of ownership that too many people feel they have over Black women.
Director Teisha M. Bankston does an incredible job keeping the tone breezy, mining every bit of comedy in Lyons’ script. The cast has fantastic chemistry, especially Johnson and Redmond. The two riff off of each other beautifully. Jade and Eemani have the kind of lifelong bond where they don’t need to finish their sentences to communicate with each other. Their physical comedy skills are a delight, and Bankston lets them play. All of this levity allows the play’s heavy moments to resonate acutely.
Don’t Touch My Hair is the third play in a trilogy from Lyons titled The Deep Breath Trilogy: New Plays for Black Women. (Back in 2023, The Black Repertory of Kansas City produced Chicken and Biscuits, the first play in the trilogy.) It’s so rare to see Black female characters be able to explore their anger and pain while maintaining such a sense of joy. That Lyons has dedicated three plays to that concept is laudable, and it’s impressive how well he—and the Unicorn team—were able to stick the landing here.
“Don’t Touch My Hair” runs through May 24 at Unicorn Theatre, 3828 Main St. For more information, visit unicorntheatre.org.
