Katherine Kingsley as Marlene
National Theatre 2019
Photo: Johan Persson
045 – Top Girls, by Caryl Churchill
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The curtain rises on a restaurant table set for six. Marlene has arrived to host a dinner party to celebrate her promotion at work – she is now the Managing Director of a recruitment agency called Top Girls. The friends who arrive to celebrate with her are not colleagues from her office or even from her personal life – they are female figures of some renown from different ages of history. So begins one of the most extraordinary and brilliant scenes of theatre ever conceived, in which six women from across history share their triumphs and challenges, loves and losses, over dinner and several bottles of Frascati.
This is the first act of Caryl Churchill’s modern classic, Top Girls, which premiered at the Royal Court in 1982 and has been revived many times since. Although the play reflected some of the political and social concerns of Britain at the time that it was written in the early 1980s, it is revived and studied on education curricula not just for its extraordinary opening scene, but for its innovative structure and for its enduring questions about the opportunities, and opportunity costs, for women who may seek to be ‘top girls’.
My expert guest in this episode is Professor Elaine Aston, who also joined me in episode 30 to talk about Caryl Churchill’s play Escaped Alone.
The 2019 National Theatre production of Top Girls is available to watch here on NT at Home.
Elaine Aston
Elaine Aston is a Professor at the Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University, and the author of a monograph on Caryl Churchill which she has updated in three editions published by Northcote House, as well as the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill and the Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights from Cambridge University Press. Elaine is acclaimed for her work on theatre research and feminism, publishing several books on Feminist Theatre Practice, and currently serves as the President of the International Federation for Theatre Research.
Elaine recommended Posh by Laura Wade
060 – A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams
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A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the towering masterpieces of American theatre, distinguished for its frank depiction of sexual compulsion, its lyrical language, and its poignant portrait of mental fragility, as well as the bitter clash between two of the greatest dramatic characters – the damaged and defiant Blanche Dubois and the unrestrained masculine power that is Stanley Kowalski.
As a new production opens in London’s West End, I’m delighted to be joined by Tennessee Williams expert, Professor Thomas Keith, to help survey this giant of a play.
059 – Paradise Now! , by Margaret Perry
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Margaret Perry’s new play Paradise Now! brings together a group of women who join a pyramid selling scheme promoting a range of essential oils that soothe a myriad of life’s stresses. The women hope that they will find cures to the challenges in their own lives, but the road to Paradise is not so sure and smooth.
Following its acclaimed run at the Bush Theatre in London, Margaret joins me to talk about her perceptive, funny and moving play.
058 – Noises Off, by Michael Frayn
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Michael Frayn’s classic comedy Noises Off is a work of theatrical genius. Its parody of a hapless acting troupe putting on a dreadful sex farce is itself delivered with extraordinary invention and precision. It has been called the funniest British comedy ever written, and now arrives in London’s West End in a sparkling 40th anniversary production directed by Lindsay Posner.
Lindsay joins me to share his unique experience of this enduring comic masterpiece.
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