by Linda Chin
‘School Girls; Or the African Mean Girls Play’ – Written by Jocelyn Bioh. Directed by Summer L. Williams. Scene design by Baron E. Pugh. Costume Design by Miranda Kau Giurleo. Lighting Design by Devorah Kengmana. Sound Design by Allyssa Jones. Presented by Speakeasy Stage Company at 527 Tremont St. Boston through May 26
With the Kavanaugh hearings and Operation Varsity Blues offering a steady stream of live theatrics about people’s willingness to steal, blackmail, and cover up the truth to get themselves (or their children) ahead, a play about bad behavior at a boarding school might be dismissed as same old, same old. Set in the Aburi girls school in Ghana in 1986, SpeakEasy Stage’s School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play by Jocelyn Bioh offers New England theatergoers a much needed respite, a refreshingly original take on the lengths that teens (and the adults they grow up to become) are willing to go in their desperateness to win, or to just fit in.
All seems to be under control until two new females – transfer student Ericka and Aburi alumna Eloise – enter the scene and shift the dynamics. Ericka’s (Victoria Byrd) sweet personality, talent and lovely looks threaten to topple Paulina’s long-desired goal of getting the crown. A former classmate of Headmistress Francis and former Miss Ghana 1966, Eloise (Kris Sidberry) is even more ambitious, mean-spirited and ruthless than she was as a student, and has a “win-win” plan to fix the competition. With confident direction and superb casting by Summer L. Williams,the ensemble of students is so energetic and expressive that even dressed in identical uniforms (starched white shirts and bright yellow skirts) their individual characters are distinguishable, relatable, and loveable.
The cast, director, and playwright’s love of the material – of the opportunity to tell this story – also shines through. Also a professional actor, Bioh started writing plays in response to the dearth of stories about the African and African-American experience and non-stereotyped, featured roles for actors of color to play. Bioh was also inspired by a real incident (2011) where a biracial woman (whose Ghanaian roots were questioned) was named Miss Ghana. White skin as our Euro-centric world’s standard of beauty has spread to Africa (and Asia) and pageant officials decided that light-skinned women have a better chance of winning in a global competition.
Paulina makes Ericka her nemesis because she has the natural fair skin tone she has been using bleaching creams to attain. Hence in School Girls’ character breakdown, Bioh states that: All characters are of West African descent and are to be played by African and/or Black actors. Thank you. Ericka is the only character Bioh specifies should be played by a fair-skinned biracial [Black and White] woman. This made me confused about the casting of Eloise (who was written as a grown-up alpha girl Paulina). In the Off-Broadway production Eloise was played by Zainab Jah, an actor with dark-skin, but at SpeakEasy is played by the much lighter-skinned Sidberry.
The play is full of fabulous moments, but the one that is worth the price of admission is the pageant audition, where the girls perform a group rendition of Whitney Houston’s 1985 hit song “Greatest Love of All.” (“I believe the children are our future/Teach them well/And let them lead the way/Show them all the beauty/They possess inside…The greatest love of all/Is easy to achieve/Learning to love yourself/It is the greatest love of all”)….If only the girls believed the lyrics and society didn’t encourage self-loathing because of skin color. For tickets and information, go to: http://www.speakeasystage.com/
