¿Necesitas ayuda?Contacta con nosotros
Sign up for our emails and be the first to know as soon as tickets go on sale.
Performance Dates
18 July - 24 August 2019
51 reviews
Run time: 1hr 45min (no interval)
Includes interval
Inua Ellams' smash-hit play, Barber Shop Chronicles, returns to London for a limited run at the Roundhouse Theatre after a sold-out run at the National Theatre. Tickets for the Barber Shop Chronicles revival are bound to be among the hottest London theatre tickets of the summer. Be sure to book your tickets early to secure the best seats at the Roundhouse at the best prices.
For many African men, the barbershop is more than just a place to get a haircut. It’s also a place of gathering and a place to seek advice where the barbershop becomes a confession box and the barbers become wise men. While the concept of the African-American barbershop is certainly nothing new and has already been explored in both the Barbershop film series with Ice Cube and even Coming to America with Eddie Murphy, Barber Shop Chronicles is a fresh take that places African identity and African masculinity front and centre while avoiding African-American identity and US barbershops altogether.
Inua Ellams' heartwarming play, Barber Shop Chronicles, is set in six cities: Johannesburg (South Africa), Harare (Zimbabwe), Kampala (Uganda), Lagos, Accra (Ghana) and London, and it takes place over the course of one day with a thousand stories to tell. The play offers the unique experience for audiences to 'eavesdrop' on the many conversations that go on when the hair clippers buzz and the towels toss. Conversation topics range from a dead fly in one's beer and Nigerian pidgin to an ingrown hair, homosexuality, football, and women. Though you'll get an inside look at the lives of African men in six different cultural settings, the dynamics between the barber and the customer remain the same.
Quick-witted, exuberant and packed with outstanding dance and music, Barber Shop Chronicles is guaranteed to leave you mesmerised from start to finish.
Inua Ellams was born in Nigeria in 1984 and is a world-renowned poet, performer, playwright, and visual artist. As a poet, he has published four poetry collections entitled #Afterhours, Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales, The Wire-Headed Heathen, and Candy Coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars. As a playwright, his debut play The 14th Tale enjoyed a critically acclaimed run at the Edinburgh International Theatre Festival, which went on to win the award for Fringe First. Barber Shop Chronicles marks the Ellams' fourth play and boasts a sold-out run at the National Theatre in London. He has recently been touring The Half God of Rainfall, a play in verse, and An Evening With An Immigrant, and he currently resides in London, where he founded the nocturnal urban excursion, Midnight Run. Ellams serves as an ambassador for the Ministry of Stories and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Barber Shop Chronicles briefly explores the many challenges that Inua Ellams has faced in real life. At a young age, he and his family were forced to flee Nigeria and escape persecution after people grew angry of Ellam's father who had begun to question his Muslim faith. After three years in London, the family moved to Ireland where Ellams was subject to racism and bullied in school for being black. His difficulty in obtaining citizenship status at the age of 18 delayed his opportunity to study at university and he turned to writing and poetry to help cope. His poetry had soon become so widely known that when he was finally able to go to college, albeit still unable to due to a lack of education funds, his work was being taught at the university he wanted to attend. Ellams hopes to bring Barber Shop Chronicles to Broadway sometime in 2020.
The Barber Shop Chronicles sees twelve actors take on the roles of 30 characters in this fourth play by Inua Ellams. The North London cast of Barber Shop Chronicles stars Adé Dee Haastrup, Anthony Ofoegbu, David Webber, Demmy Ladipo, Emmanuel Ighodaro, Maynard Eziashi, and Mohammed Mansaray from the original National Theatre production and will also star incoming actors Elmi Rashid, Eric Shango, Micah Balfour, Okorie Chukwu, and Tom Moutchi.
Don't miss out on tickets to Barber Shop Chronicles. This highly praised production is back in London at the Roundhouse this summer for a limited season. Book your tickets to see the Off-West End production of Barber Shop Chronicles early to avoid disappointment.
For tickets in rear stalls: Latecomers will be admitted at a suitable break in the performance
For tickets in front stalls: There is one latecomers point 25 minutes into the show
Inua Ellams es la próxima gran promesa entre los dramaturgos emergentes, ofreciendo nuevas perspectivas e historias que rara vez se ven en el escenario. Quizá el atributo más llamativo y único de Ellams es que es poeta ante todo y dramaturgo en segundo lugar: muchas de sus obras teatrales comienzan como poemas hasta que los conceptos se vuelven tan complejos que justifican personajes y diálogos completos.
Sin embargo, estos autodenominados 'poemas fallidos' no son la única cualidad que convierte a Inua Ellams en uno de los dramaturgos más destacados a tener en cuenta . Al igual que Natasha Gordon en Nine Night y Arinzé Kene en Misty, Inua Ellams también es un dramaturgo conocido por actuar en obras que él mismo escrie, como Black T-shirt Collection (2012), Knight Watch (2012), The 14th Tale (2009) y su obra de 2010, Untitled. Ellams tampoco teme decir la dura verdad — en 2017 admitió en una entrevista: "Me convertí en hombre negro cuando llegué a Inglaterra", un concepto que explora con frecuencia en su obra, incluyendo en una de sus obras más personales, Barber Shop Chronicles (2017), que pronto se estrenará en el Roundhouse Theatre de Londres el 18 de julio de 2019 con una temporada estrictamente limitada.
Ahora, con un extenso repertorio de Ellams, clasificamos las mejores obras del dramaturgo nigeriano-británico hasta la fecha. Aquí tienes nuestras selecciones de las cinco mejores obras escritas por Inua Ellams.
15 Jul, 2019 | By Nicholas Ephram Ryan Daniels