Theatre in Review: School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play (Manhattan Theatre Club/Broadway)This revival of Jocelyn's Bioh's crowd-pleasing comedy offers the distinct pleasure of seeing performers stretch themselves, fruitfully playing against type. Exhibit A is Denee Benton, best known as the radiant heroine of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet 1812, and the sincere striver Peggy Scott in HBO Max's The Gilded Age, appearing here as Paulina, queen bee and ruthless social arbiter at a girls' school in Ghana, circa 1986. Swanning around the cafeteria, extolling the boyfriend nobody ever sees, advertising her sophistication thanks to her American relatives (including an aunt who works at that "high-class restaurant" White Castle), and pledging allegiance to her favorite designer "Calvin Klean," she rules over her tiny dominion with an iron will. Indeed, she has her friends cowed, especially when advising them on matters of style and weight, for example, snatching away one girl's porridge breakfast, replacing it with a tiny apple. It's exhilarating to see Benton go for broke, embracing her character's unloveliest qualities while gambling that we will retain a rooting interest in her fate, a bet that pays off handsomely. Jasmine Amy Rogers' shapeshifting abilities verge on the supernatural, a skill she demonstrated last season, transitioning from sexy, sassy Betty Boop to woebegone Olive Ostrovsky in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Appearing as Ericka, a transfer student from the US, she is once again head-swivelingly different. Affable, savvy, yet with visible rough edges, Ericka is primed to dethrone Pauline, winning over the other girls with makeover parties stocked with the latest American beauty products. At the same time, she carries a certain sadness that, initially at least, is hard to pin down. (All will be revealed in a scene of brutal truth-telling.) Rogers gets a chance to show off her astonishing singing voice, but this production confirms what we already suspected: She's a character actress of considerable skill. Similarly, we know Patina Miller from her star turns in Pippin and Into the Woods. Taking on a non-musical role, she's both amusing and unnerving as the chic, charming, morally shady Eloise, a former student at the school and Miss Ghana 1966, a fact she manages to work into every other sentence. Having learned a few bitter lessons during her brief beauty queen reign and now a pageant executive, she shows up ready to audition potential contestants, carefully noting that she's looking for "girls who have a more universal and commercial look," who "fall on the other end of the African skin spectrum." (That would be light-skinned, biracial Ericka, whose sudden ascension is, to Paulina, the final indignity.) Miller creates a character informed by equal parts charm and ruthlessness, working every possible angle to get what she wants. Seen nearly a decade after its Off Broadway run at MCC Theater, School Girls; Or, the Mean African Girls Play has lost none of its rambunctious adolescent energy and humor. It works because of Bioh's affection for her sharp-clawed characters, caught up in a plot featuring blackmail, stolen personal information, and fraud, not to mention a potential cash windfall for the resource-strapped school. The dialogue retains every bit of its bite: Eloise, grandly patronizing Francis, the school's headmistress and her former classmate, says. "And here you are, still trying to keep up with the popular girls." "And here you are," murmurs Francis, "still trying to be one." (Heather Alicia Simms makes the headmistress the play's center of gravity even as Eloise lures her into a deeply compromising situation.) Director Whitney White -- ably guiding a cast that includes Lucia Aremu as Ama, the most skeptical member of Paulina's cohort; Erin Morton as shy, overweight, college-focused Nana; Nia Otchere-Sarfo as Gifty, who secretly struggles with dyslexia; and Jordan Rice as Mercy, Paulina's smoothest supplicant -- never forgets that School Girls is about the crippling effects of Western standards of beauty and success. (Hang on for the twist involving a jar of skin-bleaching cream, a saddening reminder that racism takes many forms.) But White also gets full value from the play's abundant hilarity, including a raucous group rendition of "The Greatest Love of All," a catfight filled with explosive revelations, and a scene entirely focused on the girls' nonplussed reactions to a broadcast of the "Miss Global Universe Pageant." The design team nimbly conjures an African atmosphere: Teresa L. Williams' cinder-block set offers a view of the nearby mountains and sky, which lighting designer Stacey Derosier fills with colorful sunset looks. The set is also lined with LED cove units, allowing Derosier to create saturated chase effects between scenes. Qween Jean continues her reign as an exceptionally character-observant costume designer: Note the difference between the headmistress' gorgeously colorful, expertly tailored African styles and Eloise's carefully accessorized designer ensembles; also check out the Dynasty-ready gown that Ericka selects for her audition. Cody Spencer's sound design includes several well-chosen pop music selections and the pageant broadcast. As in Jaja's African Hair-Braiding, which used her characters' snappy repartee and compelling backstories to make a point about unjust immigration laws, Bioh once again enlivens a serious argument with abundant laughter. Sounding as phony as any Miss America contestant plugging for world peace, Paulina announces, for Eloise's benefit, "If I was chosen to be Miss Ghana, God will use me as a vessel to show the world how beautiful our country is and change the stereotypes of how Africans are perceived." As School Girls makes glaringly obvious, Paulina and the others have a way to go before they can address that issue. And, as Bioh slyly suggests, forty years on, we all have a lot to learn in that department. --David Barbour 
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