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As if there was ever any doubt, you may consider it confirmed: Jocelyn Bioh and Broadway are a match made in heaven.
Bioh, a gifted Ghanaian-American playwright and actress, already proved her Broadway writing bona fides three years ago with Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, a bitter-edged comedy premiered by Manhattan Theatre Club in 2023. Now Bioh’s breakout play School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play receives its well-deserved Broadway debut, again at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre and under the direction of Tony Award nominee Whitney White.
School Girls first delighted New York audiences off-Broadway in 2017, presented at that time by MCC Theater in a breakout moment for Bioh. Bitingly witty, this smartly constructed comedy transports us to the Aburi Girls Boarding School in 1986 Ghana, where a sharp-tongued crew of young ladies are competing for a chance to become “Miss Ghana 1986.”
Queen bee Paulina (Denée Benton), the resident “Regina George” of the crew, has little doubt that local pageant recruiter Eloise (Patina Miller) will select her for national consideration. That is until Ericka (Jasmine Amy Rogers), a transfer student from Ohio, swoops in to disrupt the balance of power.
Ericka’s arrival sets off a chaotic chain of events by turns uproariously funny, stingingly painful and, for anyone who lived through teenage bullying, cruelly familiar. Yet Bioh always keeps her tone two or three notches above naturalism, allowing the audience guilt-free enjoyment in reliving all these excruciating memories. It’s a tricky balance, one that White negotiates expertly for this high-energy Broadway revival.
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That new arrival Ericka is of a lighter hue, in contrast to the other girls’ darker skin color, opens up an equally knotty conversation around colorism that Bioh handles with care. Ericka’s privilege is plainly acknowledged. But, as in all of Bioh’s writing, empathy overflows. Every character faces their own challenges, and each gets their moment to be seen. All of them, as a result, feel like fully-rounded individuals. Cartoonish individuals, to be sure (deliberately so), but fully-rounded all the same.
If Bioh overdoes it anywhere, it is perhaps with the character of Paulina. That this seemingly heartless bully will be revealed to have deep-seated insecurities is not a shocker, nor is it intended as one. We know the tropes that Bioh is playing in here, and she knows that we know them. All the same, Paulina’s eventual turn can feel a bit too heavily telegraphed, particularly in Benton’s affected portrayal. And though verisimilitude is far from the goal of this production, casting the 34-year-old Benton as an 18-year-old proves a bridge too far. (Though I did adjust to it, eventually.)
The ensemble here is, otherwise, faultless. Jasmine Amy Rogers lights up the stage as always, and subtly reveals the operator hiding under Ericka’s outward warmth. Patina Miller delightfully chews the scenery, while Heather Alicia Simms has fun with the Headmistress’ barely-concealed disdain for Eloise. The true MVPs of School Girls, though, are the other four young women, who provide much of the play’s heart. Lucia Aremu, Nia Otchere-Sarfo and Jordan Rice all have fun playing out their own mini-arcs, while fast-rising star Erin Morton lends Nana an unforced dignity that grows, by the play’s end, into a quiet fabulousness.
School Girls is now in performance at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on West 47th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.
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Who’s got the pain? Today it was announced that Damn Yankees will return to Broadway in the first revival in more than 30 years at the Marquis Theatre beginning this March. Emmy Winner Julianne Hough will star alongside Neil Patrick Harris and Austin Scott.
Hough will make her Broadway musical debut as Lola, with Neil Patrick Harris as Applegate and Scott as Young Joe, following a run at Arena Stage last fall. Directed and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, the musical will begin previews on March 24, 2027 ahead of an April 20th opening night.
Damn Yankees debuted on Broadway in 1955, winning seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical. It features music and lyrics by two-time Tony Award winners Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, and book by seven-time Tony Award winner and Pulitzer Prize recipient George Abbott and Tony Award winner Douglass Wallop. This new adaption features a book by Will Power and Dough Wright, with additional lyrics by Lynn Ahrens.
It’s the early 2000s, and diehard baseball fan Joe Boyd dreams of seeing his beloved Baltimore Orioles return to glory. So when a charming stranger and his captivating accomplice arrive with an offer too good to refuse, Joe makes a deal that could give both him and his team a second chance. There’s just one catch…
This newly adapted production will mark the first Broadway revival of Damn Yankees in more than 30 years. And in a first for a Broadway musical, Major League Baseball (MLB) and its Emmy Award-winning production label MLB Studios, will serve as a partner on the production.
Theatrely senior critic Joey Sims reviews a few shows currently performing Off-Broadway right now:
ARIAS WITH A TWIST
If you’ve ever seen a show in the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre, that 63-seat den in the basement of HERE Arts Center, you’ve likely stopped to admire the Basil Twist-original marionettes displayed by the doors: a quartet of 40s-era jazz musicians, dressed to the nines. I’ve walked past these dapper, dangling gentlemen more times than I count.
So how disorienting to see them appear on stage in Arias With A Twist, the legendary puppeteer’s wildly imaginative 2008 collaboration with legendary drag artist Joey Arias. A hit when it premiered nearly two decades ago in this same tiny theater (a longer run at Abrons Arts Center followed), Arias With A Twist now returns to HERE Arts fully intact, a fascinating replica of a time long since passed.
If that sounds like a backhanded compliment, well…yeah. The puppet work of Twist remains dazzling, and each astonishing stage picture is more trippy than the last. How the production does all of that in such a tiny space (powered by five invisible puppeteers, all masters of the craft) is beyond me.
Still, I wonder if the team erred in replicating Twist so exactly, like a museum piece on display. Arias’ voice is basically shot; the bawdy humor is played for gasps, but no longer feels so transgressive. Aside from a couple brief asides to the audience, Arias doesn’t have any fun with either of these realities. If Twist and Arias had acknowledged the passing of time, rather than ignoring it, how much more alive might this show have felt?
DON JUAN
I’m a huge fan of Molière in the Park, the outdoor theater project spearheaded by Lucie Tiberghien now in its third year of performance in Prospect Park. Sadly, Don Juan is not as strong as last summer’s enjoyable staging of The Imaginary Invalid. In contrast to the delightful clownery of Invalid, Don Juan is a more tonally uncertain affair, ping-ponging between broad comedy and grave solmenity. Even so, that genius ending still hits (“My wages!!”) and this project remains a valuable one. I hope we’re back in the park for another go next fall.
VERY BLUE LIGHT
The political and personal collide in Daphne Silbiger’s talky reunion drama Very Blue Light, an ambitious work reminiscent of Will Arbery’s Pulitzer-finalist Heroes of the Fourth Turning in form, if not in dramatic impact.
Much like Arbery, Silibiger strands four adrift 20-somethings in the desert to hash out their socio-political confusion and disillusionment. Except instead of rural Wyoming, Blue Light drops us in the deserts of Texas; and rather than conservative Catholics, this foursome fall on varying points across the left-wing spectrum…though they may be drifting in other directions.
The ideas are intriguing, and the political clashes in Blue Light crackle with intellectual energy. But while Silibiger captures fissures on the left with precision, her characters feel hazier. After the four disperse, the play segues into a dreary relationship drama that is far less engaging. Maybe we should have stayed in the debate, taking another leaf out of Arbery’s book: just one long night with four lost souls, sparring in the abyss.
THE CHERRY ORCHARD
Much as I love it when a show fills the entirety of Park Avenue Armory’s massive drill hall, I get an equal kick out of productions that embrace the immense, frightening emptiness of that space.
Simon Stone turned the drill hall into a suffocating black box for his stunning production of Yerma in 2018, with darkness seeming to press in from all sides. For his excellent new take on The Cherry Orchard, performed by an entirely Korean cast with English supertitles, Stone takes the opposite tack. Set designer Saul Kim has placed the family’s modern, glass-encased home at the center of a vast nothingness, the surrounding space stretching on and on. (James Farncombe lights the hall in beautifully subtle ways - I gasped at his use of the back wall to suggest a beautiful sunset.) The staging reinforces this wealthy Koran dynasty’s disconnection from reality, from a world spinning forward and ready to leave them behind.
With the room fulfilling all our existential despair needs, Stone is free to craft an unusually enjoyable Cherry Orchard. True, this adaptation is not exactly subtle (like his peer Robert Icke, Stone has rarely been accused of subtlety). And it does inevitably sag towards the second act, a problem of Chekov's play. But it’s hard to quibble with a production so utterly engrossing, and crafted with such unusual and startling clarity.
