I originally saw Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play downtown at the Lucille Lortel in 2017. Nearly a decade later, now playing Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, the play remains wickedly funny, painfully recognizable and far more disturbing than its buoyant title initially suggests. If I were going to retitle it, I might call it Being Made to Feel Ashamed of Your Skin Color, because beneath the teenage rivalries, vicious jokes and beauty-pageant dreams lies something much darker: what happens to young girls when they are taught that the lighter their skin, the more beauty, opportunity and even love the world will make available to them.

Jordan Rice, Denée Benton, Nia Otchere-Sarfo, and Erin Morton Photo by Matthew Murphy

Set in 1986 at a girls’ boarding school in Ghana, the play revolves around Paulina (Denée Benton), the reigning queen bee who rules her little kingdom with a  highly manicured—sting. Paulina is cruel, calculating and manipulative, and Benton lets us know it almost before she speaks. Her entrance alone communicates that everyone else in the room understands exactly where she sits in the hierarchy. Best friend Ama (Lucia Aremu), the heavy set quiet Nana (Erin Morton), and cousins Mercy (Jordan Rice) and Gifty (Nia Otchere-Sarfo) orbit Paulina almost as a single organism, parroting her opinions, laughing when expected and carefully measuring the consequences of stepping outside the protection of the hive.

Jordan Rice, Nia Otchere-Sarfo, Lucia Aremu, Erin Morton and Denée Benton Photo by Matthew Murphy

Paulina has set her sights on becoming Miss Ghana and eventually reaching the Miss Universe stage, and she has constructed an elaborate version of herself to support the fantasy. She claims American relatives, invents a professional soccer-player boyfriend and judges everything from her friends’ food to their clothing with the authority of someone who desperately needs everyone else to believe that she belongs to a world she has never actually been allowed to enter. Then Ericka (Jasmine Amy Rogers) arrives.

Patina Miller Photo by Matthew Murphy

Ericka is American, beautiful, talented and, most importantly to the world Bioh is examining, fair-skinned. Almost instantly, Paulina’s friends are fascinated by her longer hair, American products and easy glamour. What begins as ordinary teenage curiosity becomes something much uglier when Eloise (Patina Miller), a former beauty queen recruiting a contestant for Miss Ghana, arrives looking for a girl with what she considers a more “universal and commercial look.” The euphemism barely disguises what everyone in the room understands: the closer a Black girl can come to a white ideal of beauty, the more acceptable she becomes.

Patina Miller and Heather Alicia Simms Photo by Matthew Murphy

This is where School Girls stops being merely a very funny play about teenage cruelty and reveals what that cruelty has been built upon. Paulina is absolutely a bully, and Bioh never pretends otherwise. But gradually we discover the architecture underneath her viciousness. She comes from poverty, has an absent father and has been allowed to remain at school largely through the intervention of Headmistress Francis (Heather Alicia Simms). Most devastatingly, Paulina has been using skin-bleaching creams in an attempt to make herself lighter causing extreme damage.

Denée Benton photo by Matthew Murphy

The moment when her damaged skin breaks and begins to bleed is horrifying precisely because we have spent so much of the evening laughing at her. Suddenly the armor splits open with the skin. Paulina hates what the world has told her she is, and because she has no idea where to put that hatred, she turns it outward. She attacks other girls before they can discover how frightened she is that she will never be beautiful enough, wealthy enough, sophisticated enough—or light enough—to receive what she desperately wants.

Lucia Aremu, Denée Benton, Erin Morton, Nia Otchere-Sarfo, Jasmine Amy Rogers, Jordan Rice iPhoto by Matthew Murphy

Benton is extraordinary in navigating that contradiction. She never asks us to excuse Paulina, but she makes it impossible simply to dismiss her. The cruelty remains cruelty, yet underneath it we can see the wounded child who learned that survival meant becoming the person with the power to wound first. Benton gives us both girls simultaneously, and that is what makes the performance hurt.

Denée Benton, Erin Morton, Lucia Aremu, Jasmine Amy Rogers, Nia Otchere-Sarfo, Jordan Rice, and Heather Alicia Simms Photo by Matthew Murphy

Rogers wisely refuses to make Ericka merely Paulina’s angelic opposite. Her openness and desire to connect initially make her seem everything Paulina is not, but Ericka possesses no more control over the circumstances that have elevated her than Paulina has over those that diminish her. She did not choose her American upbringing, her family or the color of her skin. Yet those things immediately become currency. When Eloise chooses Ericka to compete for Miss Ghana, the supposed victory becomes another kind of violation. Rogers understands that contradiction beautifully. Ericka ultimately leaves for the pageant in tears rather than triumph.

Erin Morton, Nia Otchere-Sarfo, Heather Alicia Simms, Jordan Rice, Lucia Aremu, Denée Benton Photo by Matthew Murphy

The ensemble is terrific. Aremu, Morton, Rice and Otchere-Sarfo make the girls wonderfully funny without turning them into caricatures, and their gradual separation from Paulina becomes one of the play’s quiet pleasures. Simms brings warmth and authority to Headmistress Francis, while Miller gives Eloise enough polish that the ugliness of what she represents becomes even sharper. Eloise does not have to announce that darker skin is undesirable. The system has already taught everyone the rules.

Two-time Tony nominee Whitney White directs with tremendous control, particularly over the play’s dangerous tonal shifts. For much of its approximately 80 minutes, School Girls is joyous, fast and enormously funny. White allows us to enjoy these girls before exposing what the world has taught them to do to one another. She can move us from laughter to discomfort, anger and heartbreak without making the play feel as if it has suddenly become something else. The darkness was there all along. We were simply having too much fun to notice it.

Then comes the ending.

The girls gather around the television to watch the Miss Universe pageant. Countries are announced. South Africa sends a white contestant. Ericka fails to make the semifinalists. Slowly, almost silently, the realization settles over Paulina and the other girls. They have fought, competed, lied, humiliated one another and tried to reshape themselves according to a standard that was never designed to include them in the first place. They are watching the women the world has declared its most beautiful and none of them look like these girls.

That is where Bioh leaves us, and it physically hurts. All the adolescent warfare suddenly seems heartbreakingly small beside the machinery that created it. Paulina believed Ericka was her enemy. Ericka briefly became the chosen one. Eloise believed she understood what the marketplace wanted. Yet ultimately they are all negotiating with the same question: What happens to a girl when the world teaches her that the face and skin she was born with stand between her and being loved, admired or chosen?

School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play has lost none of its sting even after nearly ten years after I first saw it. If anything, it lands harder because beneath all that laughter is a truth we still have not managed to leave behind.

School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play is must-see theatre and plays at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through November 15.

Live From The Hotel Edison Times Square Chronicles Presents, is filmed from the Hotel Edison and is a podcast extension of T2C. We are back after a small hiatus.

Today owner Suzanna Bowling talks with with Caricaturist Ken Fallin and his new book About Face. Fallin’s big break was in 1983 doing the posters and advertising for the popular satirical revue Forbidden Broadway. In 1987, he was commissioned by the Boston Herald to do a celebrity caricature every week in the Sunday arts and entertainment section. Fallin has illustrated roughly 500 notable people for the Wall Street Journal, including President Barack Obama, Paul Newman and Tim Russert for Peggy Noonan’s memorial of the newsman in the paper.

The Fabulous Ken Fallin

His Forbidden Broadway posters promoted the show in London, Tokyo and Sydney. Outside of entertainment, Fallin developed relationships with corporate clientele, particularly American Express, which engaged him on several national media campaigns as well as private work. Belvedere Vodka hired him to turn famous icons like the Playboy Bunny and Quentin Tarantino into bottles of the alcohol. Other clients have included HBO, Showtime and Walt Disney Productions.

Ken Fallin in Shubert Alley

His new book About Face is a distinctive art and cultural publication that brings together a broad collection of caricatures celebrating notable figures from entertainment, music, Broadway, Hollywood, and contemporary popular culture. Through expressive artwork and recognizable subjects, the book captures the personalities and visual character of individuals who have made an impact on audiences across different generations. The collection reflects the author’s ability to transform familiar faces into engaging artistic interpretations while maintaining recognizable characteristics. With its combination of artistic expression, cultural familiarity, and entertainment value, ABOUT FACE offers readers more than a traditional collection of drawings. It presents a visual journey through the personalities and cultural figures that have shaped entertainment and public life.

Join Ken Fallin on October 7th at New World Stages, 340 W 50th St, from 5 – 7 for the unveiling of his art with a wine and cheese soiree. You have been invited.

I am so grateful to Ken Fallin for his conversation, his joy of life and his art that captures the imagination.

We are so proud because the show and our guests are featured on the TV screens in the lobby and the hotel rooms.

Rommel Gopez, Ken Fallin, Suzanna Bowling

Thank-you Magda Katz for videoing and creating the content to go live, Rommel Gopez and The Hotel Edison for their kindness and hospitality, Broadway HD and Dr K and at 200 West 54th Street for giving me back my health and my smile.

We have been named by Variety Entertainment News as one of Summer’s Best Picks in the category of Best Television, Radio, Podcasts. The company we are in, has made us so humbled, grateful and motivated to continue.

“The Daily Geek Report” named host Suzanna Bowling on the list of Most Engaging Hosts.

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Broadway is heading into the holidays with a little nostalgia, a lot of star power and several intriguing returns to the past.

Speaking of Broadway voices, apparently even The Gilded Age cannot resist Christmas.

Audra McDonald, Christine Baranski, Carrie Coon, Kelli O’Hara, Donna Murphy and other members of HBO’s lavish period drama have joined songwriter and producer Desmond Child for Voices of The Gilded Age: The Christmas Album, arriving November 6 through Concord Theatricals Recordings.

Among the more intriguing tracks is Stephen Sondheim’s exquisite “I Remember” from Evening Primrose, performed by McDonald, Murphy and O’Hara—a combination of voices that alone makes the album worth noticing. Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector narrate Clement Clarke Moore’s “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” throughout the recording. Child has also contributed two original songs: “The World Needs Some Christmas,” sung by Ben Ahlers, and “It’s Been Real,” performed by Murphy.

Lisa Rinna, Harry Hamlin, Megan Hilty, Andrew Rannells and Tituss Burgess are all Broadway-bound in It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, making its Broadway debut at the Broadhurst Theatre. Performances begin November 4, with opening night set for November 18, and the limited engagement running through January 3.

Directed by Jerry Zaks, Joe Landry’s 1996 play takes Frank Capra’s beloved Christmas story and returns it to the era in which George Bailey first captured America’s imagination. Rather than recreating Bedford Falls literally, the production unfolds inside a 1940s radio studio, where five actors, a Foley artist, holiday music and the mechanics of old-fashioned broadcasting bring the story to life.

Rannells takes on George Bailey, with Hilty as Mary Bailey, Burgess as Clarence, Hamlin as the formidable Mr. Potter and Rinna as Violet. It is an unusually delicious collection of personalities for material that has become nearly sacred Christmas territory, and Zaks certainly knows his way around both comedy and Broadway stars.

The play was inspired by Philip Van Doren Stern’s short story The Greatest Gift, which became the basis for Capra’s 1946 film. The Broadway production features sets and costumes by Santo Loquasto, lighting by Kenneth Posner and sound by Palmer Hefferan, with Andy Einhorn serving as musical director.

Stella Cole

Meanwhile, Maybe Happy Ending is getting a temporary new resident at the Belasco. Jazz vocalist Stella Cole will make her Broadway debut as Gil Brentley from October 20 through November 15, stepping in during original cast member Dez Duron’s month-long absence. Duron returns November 17.

Cole is an interesting choice precisely because Gil is not simply another musical-theatre role. The character belongs to the romantic world of classic jazz, and Cole has built her career interpreting exactly that repertoire. Her recordings and online performances have introduced standards to a younger audience, while her live appearances have taken her from Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden to TODAY, Live with Kelly and Mark and Tamron Hall. Her third album, Imagination, arrives October 30, right in the middle of her Broadway run.

The Tony-winning musical currently stars Zachary Noah Piser as Oliver and Hannah Kevitt as Claire, with Marcus Choi as James. For one month, however, audiences will get the rather charming collision of a young singer devoted to an earlier musical era appearing inside one of Broadway’s most technologically imaginative contemporary musicals.

Finally, a musical that has always seemed to deserve another look is getting one.

Ben Levi Ross

Asolo Repertory Theatre is developing a newly revised My Favorite Year, the Stephen Flaherty-Lynn Ahrens-Joseph Dougherty musical based on the wonderful 1982 film. Josh Rhodes is directing a New York workshop featuring Chris Hoch as Alan Swann, Ben Levi Ross as Benjy Stone, Julie Benko as Alice Miller, Marina Kondo as K.C. Downing, Brad Oscar as King Kaiser and Beth Leavel as Belle Carroca Steinberg.

The company also includes Orville Mendoza, Briana Carlson-Goodman, Robert Anthony Jones, Lyrica Woodruff, Stuart Zagnit and Rob Tucker.

Set in 1954, My Favorite Year follows young television comedy writer Benjy Stone, who receives the assignment from hell disguised as the opportunity of a lifetime: keep drunken, swashbuckling movie idol Alan Swann sober, functioning and out of trouble long enough to appear on a live television broadcast.

The musical originally opened at Lincoln Center Theater in 1992 and, despite a score by Ahrens and Flaherty and a Tony-winning performance by Andrea Martin, had a brief Broadway life. More than three decades later, Ahrens, Flaherty and Dougherty have returned to the material with new work developed in collaboration with Asolo Rep, which previously premiered the team’s Knoxville, later retitled All the Way Home.

There is something rather appealing about My Favorite Year getting another year. Broadway history is filled with musicals that weren’t quite finished with us when Broadway decided it was finished with them. Sometimes the most interesting second act happens decades after the first one closed.

Live From The Hotel Edison Times Square Chronicles Presents, is filmed from the Hotel Edison and is a podcast extension of T2C. We are back after a small hiatus.

Today owner Suzanna Bowling talks with Tony-nominated lyricist and book writer Bill Russell on his new book Still, Bill, Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens and Side Show, which was nominated for the Tony Award as Best Musical. Russell’s first produced musical was Fortune, which ran Off-Broadway at the Actors’ Plahouse. The musical director and arranger was Janet Hood; the two went on to write several musicals together. Russell then wrote the book and lyrics for the song cycle Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens, with music by Janet Hood, which originally ran Off-Off-Broadway in 1990 and in the West End in 1993 and a benefit concert in 2001.

I am so grateful to Bill Russell for his conversation and his joy of life.

Broadway is heading into fall with stars returning, new productions arriving and one beloved musical preparing to step back up to the plate. Neil Patrick Harris and Julianne Hough are leading a newly reimagined Damn Yankees to Broadway next spring, while Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Harris and Allison Janney begin performances in Other Desert Cities. Ashley Park has finished Emily in Paris and is itching for a return to the boards, Xolo Maridueña is heading into Buena Vista Social Club, and Adrienne Warren and Jessica Vosk will lead an impressive company in Lynn Nottage and John Legend’s Imitation of Life. And because apparently neither wind nor rain nor a Nor’easter can keep Broadway bargain hunters away, the Broadway Flea Market still managed to raise nearly $1.5 million.

Julianne Hough, Austin Scott, Neil Patrick Harris by Emilio Madrid

After years away from Broadway, the seven-time Tony Award-winning musical Damn Yankees will return next spring in a new production directed and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, with Neil Patrick Harris as Applegate, Julianne Hough as Lola and Austin Scott as Young Joe.

Austin Scott, Julianne Hough, Neil Patrick Harris by Emilio Madrid

Harris, a Tony winner and five-time Emmy winner, seems particularly delicious casting for the devilishly persuasive Applegate, while Emmy winner Hough will make her Broadway musical debut as Lola. The reimagined adaptation features a book by Will Power and Pulitzer Prize and Tony winner Doug Wright, additional lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and orchestrations by Doug Besterman.

Julianne Hough by Emilio Madrid

Based on Douglass Wallop’s novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, the musical follows devoted baseball fan Joe Boyd, who longs to see his beloved team achieve glory and discovers that wishes can become considerably more complicated when a charming stranger arrives offering exactly what he wants—for a price.

Austin Scott, Julianne Hough by Emilio Madrid

The original Damn Yankees opened on Broadway in 1955 and won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, giving the theatre such standards as “Whatever Lola Wants,” “Heart” and “Two Lost Souls.” This new version arrives with considerable momentum after a sold-out Arena Stage engagement that received 13 Helen Hayes Award nominations and won eight, including Outstanding Musical.

Austin Scott, Julianne Hough by Emilio Madrid

Broadway previews begin March 24, 2027, with opening night set for April 20.

Meanwhile, Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities begins Broadway performances September 29 at the Hudson Theatre, with an opening set for October 18 and a limited engagement through January 17, 2027.

And what a family has been assembled. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Polly opposite Ed Harris as Lyman, with Allison Janney as Silda, Joe Keery as Trip and Lily Rabe as Brooke. John Benjamin Hickey directs.

Baitz’s play centers on a family gathering that becomes something considerably more combustible when daughter Brooke arrives with a memoir exposing a painful chapter of family history. With Louis-Dreyfus, Harris, Janney and Rabe occupying the same stage, the family fireworks alone make this one of the fall’s most intriguing straight-play propositions.

The production features scenic design by Scott Pask, costumes by Tom Broecker, lighting by Natasha Katz, sound design and original music by Mikaal Sulaiman, and hair and wig design by Robert Pickens.

Ashley Park

Ashley Park has wrapped filming on the sixth and final season of Emily in Paris, and apparently Parisian couture and international television success haven’t cured her of wanting to get back onto a Broadway stage.

Park’s Broadway roots run deep, with credits including Mean Girls, The King and I, Sunday in the Park with George and Mamma Mia!, and it has been far too long since New York audiences have had her back where musical-theatre audiences first fell in love with her. No Broadway return has been announced yet, but if she’s longing for the boards, Broadway would undoubtedly be happy to have her.

It takes considerably more than miserable weather to separate Broadway people from theatrical memorabilia.

Despite a Nor’easter, the Broadway Flea Market & Grand Auction raised nearly $1.5 million, with its live auction alone bringing in a record-breaking $562,300.

The day’s biggest live-auction prize was a London theatre adventure featuring three pairs of West End tickets and round-trip United business-class flights, which sold for $30,000. A meet-and-greet with the cast of The Lost Boys brought $22,000, while the opportunity to shadow a Wicked stage manager fetched $20,000. Nick Nicholson and Bryan Batt kept the bidding moving.

The 156 silent-auction lots added another $206,450, and Broadway fans proved once again that a piece of a beloved production can inspire serious bidding. Ricky Rojas’ acoustic guitar, signed by Rojas, Danny Burstein, Aaron Tveit and fellow Moulin Rouge! The Musical company members, sold for $15,500, while Satine’s swing brought $9,000.

Recently closed Chess also inspired some spirited competition. The production’s knight set piece, signed by Nicholas Christopher, Lea Michele, Bryce Pinkham and Aaron Tveit, sold for $6,300, while a cast-signed opening-night Playbill went for $6,200. Todd Buonopane, Michael Goddard and Kimberly Marable hosted the silent auction with auctioneer Dan Perry.

The numbers are impressive, but the real story remains what the Flea has always represented: Broadway taking care of its own, with fans happily turning theatrical obsession into something genuinely useful.

Xolo Maridueña

Cobra Kai star Xolo Maridueña is making his Broadway debut in Buena Vista Social Club at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.

Maridueña begins performances November 17 for a limited engagement running through January 3, 2027. The actor, also known for starring in DC’s Blue Beetle, now adds Broadway to a résumé that has moved remarkably quickly between television and film.

And Buena Vista Social Club, with its intoxicating blend of storytelling, musicianship and movement, is quite a way to make an entrance.

One of the season’s most intriguing new musicals is also taking shape downtown. Principal casting has been announced for the world premiere of Imitation of Life, the new musical from Lynn Nottage and John Legend, directed by Whitney White and premiering this fall at The Shed’s Griffin Theater in a co-production with National Black Theatre.

Joining previously announced Tony winner Adrienne Warren as Delilah is Jessica Vosk as Bea, with Michael Luwoye as Elroy, Charlie Thurston as Archie, Aleyse Shannon as Adult Peola, Scarlett London Diviney as Young Peola and Lily Gilliam as Young Jessie.

That combination alone demands attention. Nottage is one of our most formidable dramatists, Legend brings an entirely different musical vocabulary to the theatre, White has established herself as a director unafraid of complicated material, and Warren is a performer capable of turning emotional intensity into something almost visceral.

Add Vosk and Luwoye, and Imitation of Life isn’t quietly arriving this fall.

It is arriving with expectations.