• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2020 / April / Archives for 24th

Archives for April 24, 2020

Queen bee gets stung

April 24, 2020 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review a webcast of the Goodman Theatre’s Chicago premiere of School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play. (In addition, the column ends with a brief tribute to Brian Dennehy.) Here’s an excerpt.

*  *  *

One reason why I cover regional theater is to see promising shows that I couldn’t shoehorn into my New York schedule. Jocelyn Bioh’s “School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play” has been at the top of that list since it opened off Broadway in 2017. An African variation on the “Mean Girls”/”Heathers” movie genre, it struck me at the time as a fabulous premise for satirical playmaking, and I’ve been waiting ever since to catch a regional staging. Indeed, Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s production was one of the first shows closed by COVID-19 to resurface as a theatrical webcast, and I’d have reviewed it had I heard about it soon enough.

Fortunately, a preview of the Goodman Theatre’s Chicago premiere of “School Girls,” which also fell victim to the pandemic, was taped just in time to be turned into a webcast. The difference is that the Goodman plans to put its production onstage when Chicago’s theaters reopen. In the meantime, the video version has been given an online run that ends this weekend, and I recommend it very strongly. Not only is “School Girls” a shiv-sharp piece of social commentary disguised as a comedy, but this staging, directed by Lili-Anne Brown and performed by an ensemble of women actors that I can’t imagine being bettered, is the kind of small-scale ensemble show for which webcasting was made….

At first glance, “School Girls” plays like something not unlike a rewrite of “Mean Girls” moved to Ghana’s Aburi Girls’ Senior High School circa 1986. Therein lies the source of the top layer of humor in the show, which is initially dominated by Paulina (Ciera Dawn), queen bee of the popular-girl clique. When not bossing around her acolytes, Paulina brags about her American cousins, who shop at such “trendy American boutiques” as Wal-Mart and eat at “high-class” restaurants like White Castle (“A castle with food!”). Then Paulina’s reign is threatened by the arrival of Ericka (Kyrie Courter), who has moved to Ghana from America…

This is a first-class production of a first-class play, one that I expect will continue to be staged all over the country after the pandemic relaxes its hold on American theatere, as well it should be….

*  *  *

Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for “School Girls”:

Replay: A Visit to CBS Color Television

April 24, 2020 by Terry Teachout

A Visit to CBS Color Television, an extremely rare film of a demonstration of early color television that was produced by CBS in 1954 for its affiliates and sponsors prior to the introduction of commercial color TV that same year. It was never telecast. Seen in the film are Charles Coburn, Claudette Colbert, Helen Hayes, Eartha Kitt, Fredric March, Janis Paige, and Ed Sullivan:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Almanac: Oscar Wilde on sorrow

April 24, 2020 by Terry Teachout

Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

April 2020
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« Mar   May »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Lookback: on not getting too big for your britches
  • Almanac: Graham Greene on the danger of changing standards
  • Just because: Graham Greene talks about The Third Man
  • Almanac: Graham Greene on facing reality
  • A pair of saints

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in