My Own Take: 'School Girls or the American Mean Girls Play'

The show: “School Girls; or the African Mean Girls Play” at Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater, for a limited run and presented by the Manhattan Theatre Club.

What makes it special?: It’s written by Tony Award-nominated Jocelyn Bioh and directed by Tony Award-nominated Whitney White (“Liberation”), who also staged Bioh’s “Jaja's African Hair Braiding.” “School Girls” received glowing reviews 9 years ago when it was off-Broadway so it took a while to get it to Broadway via a new Manhattan Theatre Club production with new director and cast. It’s well worth the wait and the delight of the fall season.

What’s it about?: It’s an exuberant comedy, but one with weight, that also touches on themes of race, class, and body imagery. It takes place in the mid-‘80s at an exclusive Ghanaian boarding school for teenage girls and taps into school cliques, colorism and teen power dynamics.

Hmmm. Like “Mean Girls?” Well it’s not called “School Girls or the African Mean Girls” for nothing. But it’s much more than that work or for that matter like movies such as “Heathers” and “Clueless” or other similarly high school-set works.

What’s out about? Paulina (Denée Benton, a revelation) is this boarding school’s ruling queen mean girl who reins over her worshipful group comprised of BFF-sorta, Ama (Lucia Aremu); loopy cousins Mercy and Gifty (Jordan Rice and Nia Otchere-Sarfo) and Nana (Erin Morton), whom Paulina cruelly taunts for her large size. Still, the girls put up with it all because they’d rather be a part of her group than be outsiders.

Side note: One can easily imagine the story on a larger canvas, such as a film or mini series, where the population of the school can expand the playing field. These girls are so interesting and appealing one wants to know more about them than this intermission less play allows.

It’s clear to all — especially Paulina — that she is destined to be chosen from her school to compete for the Miss Ghana contest, and that winner will go on to the global beauty competition for even greater acclaim and perhaps even a modeling career. Certainly a way out of her town, whose beautiful mountains came be glimpsed outside the school windows of Teresa L. Williams’ set. Paulina is supported in her dreams by the school’s regal-but-compassionate headmistress (beautifully played by Heather Alicia Simms).

But when a new transfer student from the the U.S. — Ericka (Jasmine Amy Rogers) — arrives, Paulina’s posse quickly (a little too quickly) gravitates to the new student, whose Ghanaian father runs a local cocoa factory and she is seen as not only American but privileged. Ericka’s charm, enthusiasm, style, beauty products and knowledge of all things American is a magnet to the girls — except Paulina. Ericka is a light-skinned beauty and it instantly becomes clear that Ericka is upsetting the balance of power — not to mention Paulina’s beauty queen scenario.

Sounds like we know where this is going: And you wouldn’t be far from wrong. But the power of the play lies in the performances and the nuances of its serious themes beneath the laughs (which are many). Rogers (a Tony nominee for “Boop!”) and Benton (TV’s “The Gilded Age” and a Tony nominee for “Natasha and Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812”) are terrific and are stunning in an extraordinary scene where both girls do a kind of sing-off in order to impress the recruiter, played with grandness by Patina Miller. They not only show their formidable singing skills but deliver on the girls’ heartbreaking desperation beneath the power notes.

What elevates “School Girls” despite its glib subtitle is that that the character of Paulina is a complex one, one that Benton plays to perfection. Her “meanness” means something more than we imagined. The same nboit so simple backstory applies to several other characters, too.

Who will like it?: Those looking for a boisterous, laugh-out-loud comedy with depth of feeling and themes to talk about long after the play ends.

Who won’t?: Those mean girls in high school you remember.

For the kids?: Junior and high schoolers will love it. Maybe younger kids, too. Its body-positive themes will resonate, too.

Looking into the future?: It’s early in the season but the play has potential as a best play nominee and a slew of nominations for the cast. (There really should be a Tony Award for best ensemble.)

Thoughts on leaving the parking lot?: If the African beauty pageant storyline sounds a bit familiar it echoes the story of Yayra Erica Nego, a light-skinned Minneapolis-born model who won Miss Universe Ghana in 2011. The rule that contestants had to be born in the country they were representing were ignored and a mini-scandal followed.

This story is not that story per se but that desperation to succeed at any price certainly is. Also the issue of colorism is painfully (literally) and poignantly dealt with here. As the former pageant queen notes, the judges prefer girls “on the other end of the African skin spectrum.”

Amid all the laughter, Bioh, White and an extraordinary cast reveal the play’s tender heart, too.

Info: The 80-minite intermissless play runs through Nov. 15. The play is at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street. www.ManhattanTheaterClub.com