'Top Girls' Not Really On Top by Annie Tang

                    Trafalgar Square across the way from Trafalgar Studios.

             Caryl Churchill’s theatrical anthem to feminism—the good, the bad, the ugly—may have been revolutionary for its time in 1982, but it is a bit outdated and frankly drawn out in the production at Trafalgar Studios. The play centers on Marlene, a “modern” woman who left her family behind in order to escape her past and eventually gain a successful career in an employment agency whose name is eponymous with the production’s title.  The first act focuses on Marlene’s imaginary dinner conversation with famous fictional and historical figures and their struggles as women in their respective worlds.  The second act deals with her family life and the consequences of her abandonment of them.

            Despite the presence of the actresses playing historic and mythic characters, the set design, props, and costumes made the experience of a dinner party seem realistic.  There was real, or at the least, edible meals in front of each woman and the clinking of the crystal glasses, the movement of metal utensils, and the visual evidence of food on each plate was delightful for the senses of the audience.  The streamlined “newness” of the set, background, and props in any city setting that related to Marlene’s modern life harkened to the endless possibilities the 1980’s envisioned for the yuppie generation.  The dank, aged plainness of the house Marlene grew up in exemplified the broken promises of the past and made the viewer feel gloomy, as was the intended point of the designer and director.  Luckily the period costumes instead of assuming an embarrassing air as most 1980’s plays performed today tend to do, successfully pulls off an accurate exhibition of the era without trying to hard or being too conscious of its fashion fads.

            It is really the writing that takes a hit for Churchill tends to create dialogue that is ad nauseum: long and unnecessary.  Act I puts the theatre-goer through verbal hell because all 5 of the imaginary characters in Marlene’s head need, no want to explain each of their personal and extremely depressing stories as afflicted women.  Understandably, the playwright wanted to hit home how the circumstances of this gender has not really changed all that much, but she could have done it in a more succinct fashion instead of letting the audience hear women complain longer than they should have in the dialogue. One quickly loses attention, being too bored to have one’s attention captured by the time Act II occurs. I do applaud the actresses for giving her script a go though.  Having to literally talk over on another as the writing attests must have been just as difficult as watching this play.