For some of us, the mere mention of high school evokes memories of lunch periods spent in the backseat of a car, getting stoned and listening to Led Zeppelin. But really, who needs memories when you’ve got a good John Hughes flick sitting around? Is there anything more delicious than his sardonically candy-coated version of high school? The Fling, a youthful sketch comedy group with potential, taps into the latent pre-teen nostalgia of the genre—in its eighties version, of course—with mixed results. There are entire chunks of this show that are godawful bad, but I’m not ready to write off this four-member troupe just yet; there are some killer one-liners in here, as well. A video presentation on the history of Mohansen High School generates big laughs as it introduces the cast of stock characters: the teachers, the nerds, the jocks and the bullies, who happen to have the best names in the show: Halitosis Steve, Sludgy Pete and Doug the Chick. The basic Mohansen premise—outlined hilariously on www.mohansenhighschool.com—is actually pretty funny. Now all these writer-performers need is a crackerjack director to pick up the pace and weed out the garbage. “Homecoming” runs through Friday; starting next week the troupe launches episode two—“The Tryouts”—which, according to the program, will follow “the same cliques from the first chapter, as well as some new faces, through the harrowing cheerleader auditions.” (Nina Metz)
The Beauty Myth: A Review of "School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play" at Goodman Theatre Set in 1986 in the Aburi Girls Boarding School in Ghana, five teenagers gossip and primp as they prepare for beauty pageant auditions the following day. The social hierarchy of "mean girls'' is quickly established, as Paulina, the prettiest and best singer, alternately boasts about her superiority and denigrates her classmates for what she considers their inferiority.
