TOP GIRLS. To 18 November.
Watford
TOP GIRLS
by Caryl Churchill
Palace Theatre To 18 November 2006
Mon-Sat 7.45pm except 13-14 Nov 7pm Mat Wed 2.30pm Sat 3pm
Audio-described 18 Nov 3pm
Stagetext 13 Nov
Post-show discussion 14 Nov
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 01923 225671
www.watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 November
Middling Top Girls.
This is a clear production of a fine play. That’s its strength and limitation. Director Kirstie Davis has ensured her cast dot every i, cross every t. A good company, they do it capably. But it leaves no space for subtext; everything’s laid bare. This works fine in terms of twitches and glances; for example, a bored listener swigging coffee or crossing and uncrossing her legs. But it soon becomes a matter of mannerisms over mind. In contrast, there’s the forceful, contained intensity of Zoe Aldrich’s Joyce, in both silence or anger.
That still leaves enough, in a play that’s surprisingly realistic after its striking first act. Incidentally, if there must be only one interval, it shouldn’t be mid-act, breaking Churchill’s structure (integral to the play’s meaning) of short, workaday scenes between extended pictures of Marlene’s business success and family failure. One’s celebrated by a fantasy party in the City, with women from history as guests, the other marked by her realistically-presented inability to relate to her sister back ‘home’ in rural East Anglia.
The production’s clarity helpfully points up ironic cross-casting between the opening and subsequent scenes, or the way overlapping dialogue at Marlene’s party contrasts angry shouting between Marlene and her sister Joyce.
But it also throws light on details which emphasize the distance between 1982 and now: the vanished examination system, changes in money values. Usually incidentals to characters’ inner workings, here they become minor obstacles to immediacy. And attitudes more prevalent in the eighties obtrude; a visit by the wife of Marlene’s unsuccessful, male, rival for the company’s top job is a damp squib rather than a firecracker.
But there’s enough in both play and playing to give this revival point, helped by Chloe Lamford’s design, its first act’s long restaurant table being assertively thrust apart by Marlene to form two smaller work-tables. Everything’s backed by a huge hoarding-like screen. Here, a grey world-map is bestridden by Top Girls’ bar-charts or its logo, an elegant, power-dressed woman stylised into a dagger-point. At times such images vanish in a hail of static; an image summing up Marlene’s world.
Isabella Bird/Joyce/Mrs Kidd: Zoe Aldrich
Pope Joan/Louise: Elaine Caxton
Lady Nijo/Win: Sara Houghton
Patient Griselda/Nell/Jeanine: Emma Pallant
Waitress/Shona/Kit: Claire Redcliffe
Marlene: Rachel Sanders
Dull Gret/Angie: Hayley Jayne Standing
Director: Kirstie Davis
Designer: Chloe Lamford
Lighting: James Farncombe
Sound: James Drew
Voice coach: Sally Hague
Assistant director: Katy Silverton
2006-11-09 08:26:41