Regina George has met her Ghanaian match in Jocelyn Bioh’s side-splittingly funny, acerbically perceptive, unexpectedly touching School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play, imported to the Kirk Douglas Theatre from its hit off-Broadway run with most of its original MCC Theater cast intact.

 Meet Paulina Sarpong (MaameYaa Boafo), undisputed queen bee at Aburi Girls Boarding School, and her sycophantic entourage: adoring (and adorable) Gifty and Mercy (Paige Gilbert and Mirirai Sithole), bespectacled brain Ama (Latoya Edwards), and compulsive overeater Nana (Abena Mensah-Bonsu), each more eager than the next to escape Paulina’s viperous tongue and remain in her not-so-benevolent good graces.

These five school girls may live in the hills of West Africa circa 1986, but they’re as aware of contemporary mass culture as their American counterparts, if not always accurately informed. (They’re under the impression that White Castle is “a castle with food,” that only the trendy shop at Walmart, and that when it comes to prestige designers, no one tops “Calvin Kleen.”)

 That’s why this afternoon’s arrival of Ohio-raised Ericka Boafo (Joanna A. Jones), daughter of a local plantation owner, has the school in a flutter.

Not only does Ericka speak perfect American English, have naturally wavy brown hair, and know that White Castle is just a McDonalds wannabe, her fair complexion makes her the object not just of envy but of Paulina’s rage at the threat she poses on this day in particular, for it’s today that Miss Ghana 1966 (Zenzi Williams as Eloise Amponsah, onetime high school nemesis of Myra Lucretia Taylor’s Headmistress Francis) has arrived to select this year’s representative at the Miss Global Universe Pageant, an honor Paulina has assumed was hers for the taking.

Not so once Eloise has laid eyes on Ericka’s “more universal and commercial look” a skin tone “on the other end of the African skin spectrum” that no amount of bleaching cream will ever allow Paulina to call her own.

 New York-born playwright Bioh has not only done her Mean Girls homework; visits to her parents’ native Ghana (and more specifically to the school where her mother once studied) give Bioh’s comedy a decided ring of both familiarity, originality, and truth. (It turns out that Miss Ghana 2011 was the U.S.-born-and-raised Erica Nego, whose mixed-race background wasn’t all that different from Bioh’s Ericka Boafo.)

On a serious level, School Girls exposes the pervasiveness of skin color-related discrimination, even in the hills of Ghana. (Eloise blames her inability to crack Miss Global Universe’s coveted Top 10 to her own darker complexion.)

Playwright Bioh makes it equally clear that no mean girl is mean without motivation and that even a bed-of-roses privileged life can have its own thorns, and never more so than in a powerful one-on-one that has both Paulina and Ericka revealing the pain beneath their radiant smiles.

Indeed my only quibble with School Girls is that its 75-minute running time leaves the audience longing for more.

 Under Rebecca Taichman’s pitch-perfect direction, all eight leading ladies (five of whom are reprising their off-Broadway roles) deliver finely delineated performance gems, with special snaps to Boafo’s star turn as a girl you love to hate (and then just want to give a great big comforting hug) and to radiant cast newbie Jones, who proves herself as fine a comedic-dramatic actress as she is a singer who could give any pop diva a run for her money.

 Scenic designer Arnulfo Maldonado has created what I’m told is a spot-on replica of a Ghanaian high school cafeteria, lit to a sun-baked perfection by Jen Schriever as are Dede Ayite’s mix of school girl uniforms and big-shouldered ‘80s frocks complemented by Cookie Jordan’s just-right hair and wig design, with Palmer Hefferan’s spicy sound design completing the NYC production design mix.

Deborah Hecht is dialect coach. Rachel Gross is production stage manager.

Casting out of New York is by Telsey + Company, Adam Caldwell, CSA, William Cantler, CSA, and Karyn Casi, CSA

 With School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play set to reopen at New York’s Louise Lortel Theatre this fall, East Coasters are in for a return-engagement treat. Thankfully, Angelinos don’t have to wait even an instant to cheer the mean—and not so mean—girls who’ve made Culver City their September home.

Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City.
www.centertheatregroup.org

–Steven Stanley
September 8, 2018
Photos: Craig Schwartz

Tags: Center Theatre Group, Jocelyn Bioh, Kirk Douglas Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, MCC Theater