‘School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play’ Broadway Review: When Escape Is Just A Clique Away
The battle lines are drawn early and definitively in Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play. The cruelties come fast and cut deep in this Ghana school lunch room where all the unspoken rules of adolescent pick-or-be-picked-upon are as strict as they are in high schools the world over. Or in other […]
Jocelyn Bioh's play "School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play" has opened on Broadway at MTC's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. The play is set in a Ghana school lunch room where the rules of adolescent social hierarchy are strict. According to Deadline, the cruelties come fast and cut deep among the students.
The play explores themes of women's solidarity in the face of collective oppression, with a large female cast and few male roles. TheWrap notes that this play, along with others like "Liberation" and "Jaja's African Hair Braiding", differs from traditional "chick flicks" in its substance and focus on female relationships.
Denée Benton, known for her role in HBO's "The Gilded Age", stars as the lead mean school girl, with Jasmine Amy Rogers playing a key role. The current Broadway cast is more star-studded than the ensemble that premiered Off Broadway in 2017.
Brief written by urgent.news from Deadline, TheWrap — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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- ‘School Girls’ Broadway Review: Denée Benton Isn’t Just Mean, She’s a Teenage Lady Macbeth thewrap.com
- ‘School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play’ Broadway Review: An Exceptional Portrait of Black Girlhood variety.com
- Denée Benton and Patina Miller Help Give ‘School Girls’ a Broadway Glow-Up nytimes.com
