‘School Girls’ Arrives on Broadway With a Starry Cast

Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play has made its Broadway debut, nearly a decade after its 2017 Off-Broadway premiere. The new Manhattan Theatre Club production brings the comedy to the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre with Denée Benton, Patina Miller and Jasmine Amy Rogers leading an all-female ensemble.

A beauty pageant disrupts the social order

Set at Ghana’s Aburi Girls Boarding School in 1986, the play follows Paulina, the school’s ruling social force, as she prepares for a chance to compete for the Miss Ghana crown. Her plan is unsettled by the arrival of an American transfer student and a pageant recruiter whose visit turns an adolescent rivalry into a sharper examination of beauty, status and colorism.

Benton plays Paulina, while Rogers portrays the new student who threatens her position. Miller appears as the recruiter. The company also includes Lucia Aremu, Erin Morton, Nia Otchere-Sarfo, Jordan Rice and Heather Alicia Simms.

Bioh and Whitney White reunite

Whitney White directs the production, reuniting with Bioh after their work on Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. Manhattan Theatre Club says performances began September 8, with the Broadway opening arriving Monday. The production is presented in association with Chase This Productions and Susan Kelechi Watson.

TheWrap’s opening-night review praised the way the play brings questions of social pressure and solidarity into a school setting, while taking a more mixed view of some of its comic confrontations. That response underlines the production’s balancing act: the title promises recognizable teenage cruelty, but the stakes extend beyond who controls the lunchroom.

The Broadway arrival also gives Bioh’s earlier work a new platform after the success of Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. Rather than treating the Ghanaian setting as decoration, School Girls places local ideas about class, opportunity and appearance at the center of its conflict. The starrier cast may attract initial attention, but the production’s lasting conversation is likely to focus on how quickly a competition for visibility exposes the rules young women are expected to navigate.