In the 2004 teen film Mean Girls, Cady Heron moves from Africa to Illinois, where she finds the high-school hierarchy of “girl world” is not unlike the food chain. “Being at Old Orchard Mall kind of reminded me of being home in Africa,” she thinks, “by the watering hole, when the animals are in heat.” Joselyn Bioh’s 2017 play takes on Mean Girls and the genre it spawned—the cliques, the flirting, the fighting—by relocating the story to an exclusive boarding school in Ghana, where the most popular student is thrown by a charismatic newcomer. An exploration of how universal “girl world” truly is, the play has been a triumph since its premiere Off Broadway at the MCC Theater, which brought it a number of New York awards. This production at Manhattan Theatre Club is directed by the two-time Tony Award nominee Whitney White. —Clementine Ford