A beloved comedy reaches Broadway
Jocelyn Bioh's one-act comedy School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play has opened on Broadway at the Samuel J Friedman Theatre in New York, in a production directed by Whitney White. The play first premiered off-Broadway in 2017, then transferred to Los Angeles and was remounted in New York the following year. It has since been staged in more than 75 theaters across the United States and had a successful run in London. Its familiar structure, richly detailed characters and steady stream of sharp lines help explain that reach, as does its 80-minute running time.[S1]
White, who previously directed Bioh's Tony-winning Jaja's African Hair Braiding, is at home with an all-women ensemble. She often works with a team of regular collaborators: Nikiya Mathis, who won a special Tony for the hair and wig designs on Jaja's, and Qween Jean, whose costumes appeared in the Pulitzer-winning Liberation. Together they keep visual splendor on the stage.[S1]
Colorism complicates the pageant race
Bioh's script traces a clique at a Ghanaian all-girls school as it disperses and reassembles after an American transfer student arrives in 1986. Before that, ringleader Paulina, played by Denée Benton, is certain she will be the school's pick for the Miss Ghana beauty pageant. She treats her friends Ama, Gifty and Mercy, played by Lucia Aremu, Nia Otchere-Sarfo and Jordan Rice, like handmaidens and is especially cruel to the plus-sized Nana, played by Erin Morton.[S1]
Jasmine Amy Rogers plays the transfer student Ericka, whose charm, beauty and eagerness to fit in make her immediately popular at school and immediately dangerous to Paulina's status. The writing then complicates matters: Ericka's much lighter complexion, as pageant scout Eloise (Patina Miller) points out, gives her broader commercial appeal. Viewers who want the queen bee humbled must reckon with colorism. Money matters too, because the headmistress (Heather Alicia Simms) is inclined to overlook problems since the pageant's cash prize would help her short-staffed school.[S1]
A comedy with sociocultural heft
Rather than reinventing anything, School Girls relies on familiar plotting, and that predictability feels reassuring even while the play digs into difficult ideas. Bioh has explained that she gave up equating suffering with seriousness early on, yet her work still carries the sociocultural heft she once thought only grim dramas could deliver. Like Jaja's African Hair Braiding and the Lagos-set Nollywood Dreams, this is unapologetically a comedy, though one built on precise, knowing detail. She honors her teenagers' right to petty squabbles and their specific circumstances alike, and that balance keeps the play resonant. Her acting past also shows in the lively dialogue and sharply drawn characters, which White, herself a performer and playwright, realizes with an outstanding company.[S1]
Miller and Simms, both seasoned stage performers, bring warmth and an easy dignity to the grown-up parts. Aremu, Otchere-Sarfo and Rice each make Paulina's supposed hangers-on funny and fully distinct, while Morton embodies both compassion and resolve. Benton stays committed to her character's practiced diva persona even as her hold over the other girls slips, lending genuine sorrow to the fall. Her sparring with Rogers is finely calibrated, cresting in a group number for the pageant scout: trading lines on Whitney Houston's Greatest Love of All, Rogers plays Eve Harrington to Benton's Jenna Maroney. Benton's stretching of one line, slowing the tempo as though grabbing the spotlight, is a masterclass.[S1]
A production built to make audiences smile
Rogers, meanwhile, has spent two years collecting breathless acclaim. The Boop! standout appears incapable of a wrong move, having shone in pop, jazz and contemporary musicals, and in March she moves into Golden Age territory with The Sound of Music. Now she proves she can handle a straight play as well. Even a stumble, and that seems highly unlikely, would be overshadowed by her enormous charisma and obvious poise.[S1]
Designer Teresa L Williams sets an appealing cafeteria lined with breeze blocks and backed by a striking vista of stormy mountains that hint at the warmth and upheaval ahead. Scene changes flow quickly without feeling hurried, lifted by Ghanaian highlife music that comes through clearly in Cody Spencer's sound design. This is a show skilled at generating joy, and for a play so obviously beloved over the past ten years, its Broadway arrival feels like a lovely homecoming. School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play plays the Samuel J Friedman Theatre in New York through 1 November.[S1]
