TOP GIRLS: Churchill, Aldwych then touring till April

TOP GIRLS: Caryl Churchill
Aldwych Theatre: Tkts, 0870 6000 805
Runs: 2h 40m, till 2 February, touring till 20 April
Review: Vera Lustig, 17 January 2002

Highly intelligent, well-paced production of this audacious play – still pertinent after 20 years – capturing its wit and underlying desolation
Everything is possible: a clutch of women from herstory and legend whoop it up in a London restaurant, circa 1980, guests of Marlene, newly-promoted boss of 'Top Girls' employment agency. They proudly tell their stories, in overlapping dialogue: Pope Joan stoned to death after giving birth; Griselda compelled to give up her children to prove her wifely devotion . . .

Churchill is too clear-eyed to posit women solely as victims or to provide pat answers. In the ensuing scenes in the agency, Marlene and her two colleagues, Win and Nell, humiliate their applicants. Win (excellent Sophie Shaw, all big hair, short skirt and painted smile, flauntingly post-coital after a weekend chez her married lover), toys with middle-aged Louise, who is seeking – too late – deliverance from the firm to which she has been married for 21 years. In Max Stafford-Clark's original production, the audience laughed at Salina Cadell's dowdy Louise – a reaction absent from all subsequent productions I have seen, including this one. A small step . . .

Win presents us with her own CV, when she breezily recites her raffish life story to Marlene's visiting adolescent 'niece'. A shadow crosses her face as she describes Mexico, as 'no country for a single lady'. Even top girls teeter on the brink of perdition. The 'success story' is a flimsy construct.

That feeling of precariousness permeates Hattie Ladbury's superb Marlene. Her strenuously groomed exterior contains vulnerability, emptiness, sexual hunger, and the raw determination and rootlessness of someone who has wrenched herself free of rural poverty.

Director Sharrock gives us a chance to reflect, by splicing stillness into the teeming action: the curtain falls slowly as the uproarious dinner ends, with Marlene's haunted gaze averted from her guests. Visiting her sister Joyce back in Suffolk, Marlene leaves Joyce alone for a long time in the kitchen littered with her placatory gifts. Joyce's resentful pensiveness seems to ask: is there such a thing as sisterhood?

Cast:
Marlene: Hattie Ladbury
Isabella Bird, Nell Jeanine: Elizabeth Berrington
Lady Nijo, Joyce, Mrs Kidd: Helen Anderson
Dull Gret, Angie: Pascale Burgess
Pope Joan, Louise: Joanna Scanlan
Patient Griselda, Win: Sophie Shaw
Waitress, Kit, Shona:Tameka Empson

Director: Thea Sharrock
Design: Rachel Blues
Lighting: Johanna Town
Sound Mic Pool

2002-01-21 20:38:38