Top Girls, by Caryl Churchill
Jul. 22nd, 2015 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aI was pleased when I saw that Churchill's Top Girls was on the calendar for the Shotgun Players this year, because it's a modern classic, and I'd like to see more of that. So, we saw it tonight.
I thought Top Girls showed off how to offer up an unusual plot structure and go sort of postmodernist without destroying the play (as has happened at too many Shotgun and Berkeley Rep productions I've gone too). I mean, in order, the three acts of the play are: a dream about having dinner with great women; a series of scenes in the office and the country; and then a birthday party a year previous that puts it all in perspective.
(Ironically, Churchill seems to have gone way more postmodernist after Top Girls, and I have a suspicion I'd hate her later work.)
Anywho, this one is about women in the world. It's a really great play for Shotgun's season of women because everyone in the play is a woman and it's all about them.
The first act is interesting because it's about the cruelty and problems faced even by great women in past times ... and it's all about their relationship with children. Pope Joan is stoned to death after she gives birth, Lady Nijo has her children forever stolen, and Patient Griselda has her children taken away for years and years as part of a warped loyalty test by her Earl. As modern viewers, we can wince at this cruelty, and look down upon it as something we've grown past.
Which is of course supported in Act II when we see that Marlene, the host of that dream dinner, is a successful business woman, about to move up in the world. Of course Act III reveals to us the truth, and so hammers at our beliefs of a progressive modern world: we learn that she was only able to make that successful life ... by abandoning her child, and her child seems to be in a very bad place now.
There's a lot in the play too about women being forced into male roles in order to rise to greatness, from the disguised pope Joan to the warrior woman Gret to the Victorian adventuress Isabella. To, of course, Marlene.
So, the more things change the more they stay the same, it seems. And Churchill does a very effective job of showing us how the biases of our own society blind us to the prejudices within it. (A lesson that people who whine about being called privileged could bear to learn.)
Some of the play is obviously a reaction against Margaret Thatcher too, who is called out in the play by a wonderful scene which goes something like this: "And it's wonderful to have our first female prime minister." "But if it's Margaret Thatcher, is it worth it?" And, there's some class stuff too, with Marlene clearly having abandoned her progressive roots to become a member of the conservative party. I suspect that has to do with the topic of female masculinity.
Overall, a good play, a thoughtful play, and one that takes good advantage of postmodern touches to actually create something that's thoughtful, not obscure.
I thought Top Girls showed off how to offer up an unusual plot structure and go sort of postmodernist without destroying the play (as has happened at too many Shotgun and Berkeley Rep productions I've gone too). I mean, in order, the three acts of the play are: a dream about having dinner with great women; a series of scenes in the office and the country; and then a birthday party a year previous that puts it all in perspective.
(Ironically, Churchill seems to have gone way more postmodernist after Top Girls, and I have a suspicion I'd hate her later work.)
Anywho, this one is about women in the world. It's a really great play for Shotgun's season of women because everyone in the play is a woman and it's all about them.
The first act is interesting because it's about the cruelty and problems faced even by great women in past times ... and it's all about their relationship with children. Pope Joan is stoned to death after she gives birth, Lady Nijo has her children forever stolen, and Patient Griselda has her children taken away for years and years as part of a warped loyalty test by her Earl. As modern viewers, we can wince at this cruelty, and look down upon it as something we've grown past.
Which is of course supported in Act II when we see that Marlene, the host of that dream dinner, is a successful business woman, about to move up in the world. Of course Act III reveals to us the truth, and so hammers at our beliefs of a progressive modern world: we learn that she was only able to make that successful life ... by abandoning her child, and her child seems to be in a very bad place now.
There's a lot in the play too about women being forced into male roles in order to rise to greatness, from the disguised pope Joan to the warrior woman Gret to the Victorian adventuress Isabella. To, of course, Marlene.
So, the more things change the more they stay the same, it seems. And Churchill does a very effective job of showing us how the biases of our own society blind us to the prejudices within it. (A lesson that people who whine about being called privileged could bear to learn.)
Some of the play is obviously a reaction against Margaret Thatcher too, who is called out in the play by a wonderful scene which goes something like this: "And it's wonderful to have our first female prime minister." "But if it's Margaret Thatcher, is it worth it?" And, there's some class stuff too, with Marlene clearly having abandoned her progressive roots to become a member of the conservative party. I suspect that has to do with the topic of female masculinity.
Overall, a good play, a thoughtful play, and one that takes good advantage of postmodern touches to actually create something that's thoughtful, not obscure.