Barber Shop Chronicles is a generously funny, heart-warming and insightful new play set in five African cities, Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos, Accra, and in London. Inspired in part by the story of a Leeds barber, the play invites the audience into a unique environment where the banter may be barbed, but the truth always telling. The barbers of these tales are sages, role models and father figures who keep the men together and the stories alive. Inua Ellams's celebrated play was first produced by the National Theatre, Fuel and Leeds Playhouse in 2017. It's always bracing to watch the National open its arms, doors and repertoire to new work, new audiences, new experiences. There's certainly not been anything like this all-male, all-black piece from poet/playwright Inua Ellams, which bounces with brio as it whisks us around a series of African barber shops in six countries on two continents over the space of a single day... it becomes gradually clear that these resolutely female-free spaces are also part confessional, part psychiatrist's chair for both the staff and customers. Hefty topics ripple and re-echo over the thousands of miles that separate the establishments: how to be a father, how to be a son, how to be a man. A joke about a fly in a pint also travels effortlessly.