Wehni Mengesha, left, and Trey Anthony are bringing Da Kink In My Hair to the Princess Of Wales. (Photo: Ernest Doroszuk, SUN)

No, Trey Anthony and Wehni Mengesha want you to know, the play Da Kink In My Hair is not a black woman's riff on the success of the movie Barbershop.

In fact, the two were ahead of the black-hair/black-culture curve by more than a year when they workshopped Anthony's serio-comic monologues into a play that rocked the 2001 Toronto Fringe Festival with sellout performances.

"Now everyone wants to make movies about barber shops and hair salons, but I always have to tell people, 'No, no, we were first,' " says Anthony, a comic who turned dramatic with the tale of a saucy hairdresser who unlocks the hearts and hardluck stories of her customers with a touch of their hair.

"Our story is much grittier. And Barbershop is another case of us getting only the black American experience. We don't see the black West Indian Canadian experience, and that has been the pull for this play for Canadian audiences."

Just how far it's been pulled is breathtaking to its creators. Da Kink -- which had a budget of $500 and a length of 40 minutes in its Fringe incarnation -- opens at the Princess Of Wales Thursday with more songs and dance numbers and a budget a thousandfold larger.

It is the first Canadian play ever produced in the space -- a testament to the Mirvishes and the faith they've put into the little play that could.

This is, after all, the theatre with a stage as big as the Savannah in The Lion King. "God, don't remind me," says director Mengesha. "It was not my objective to make it bigger. I wanted to stay truthful, to highlight the moments and stay true to the integrity of the piece. There's more music, but it's still about intimacy, and I tried to create an intimate set."

No chandeliers, no helicopters, just women adjusting to life in Canada amidst tales of incest, murder and betrayal by loved ones, but also no small amount of joy.

"When we first tried these monologues out, I gave out surveys," Anthony says. "They came back saying, 'We like your comedy, where is it?' 'cause these are heavy monologues with suicide and whatever, and I went back to the drawing board and said 'Okay, maybe I can't escape the comedy.' "

Anthony admits that a breakup had contributed to the play's dark sense in its Fringe days. She's lightened it up since then. One new subplot has veteran comic actor Satori Shakoor "as an older woman who just got her groove back. Her husband died and she's dating the neighbour across the fence. It's a very funny and sexy monologue with a great dance number.

"I was a young girl at a different place when I first wrote Da Kink, and I've gone back and changed the arcs of the stories. Without giving anything away, I've added depth."

As for the ex-boyfriend, "He's come out to see it, and he loves it. He said, 'Good for you, see what a good breakup can do for you?' "

It's a classic road-not-taken story. Da Kink -- which ran a few years ago at Theatre Passe Muraille -- was also a hit at the New York Fringe. "Then NBC asked us to come back and do an industry showcase," says Anthony, who'd lived in New York when she interned on The Chris Rock Show.

"It was a lot of schmoozing and people asking 'Where you wanna go with it?' But we'd already done the deal with Theatre Passe Muraille."

A pilot version of Da Kink ran on Vision TV last November, but Mengesha bowed out as director ("I like the connectedness and I'm addicted to the rush of the stage," she says).

Adds Anthony: "If I could make as much money in theatre as TV, I'd do theatre every time. I definitely feed off that energy -- where the audience talks back to us, calls out a response. That doesn't happen on TV."

That also doesn't happen at the Princess Of Wales, I add.

"I think you'll be surprised," she says, laughing. "People just go with it. At Theatre Passe Muraille, we heard, 'You go, girl!' in the front rows. I don't see why this should be different."