Review - Top Girls: Gender & The City

Maybe I've been watching too many Sex & The City re-runs but once or twice during Manhattan Theatre Club's terrifically acted revival of Caryl Churchill's 1982 drama of gender politics, Top Girls, I couldn't help wondering how its famous first act might work if the cast included Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon. Because if you don't know the play itself, it may strike a familiar chord if I said, "It's that one where a group of interesting women get together in a restaurant having revealing conversations while drinking lots of alcohol."

While Top Girls is absolutely a play of its time and place (the British author has stated her inspiration as being the contrast between the collectively-minded brand of feminism then practiced in England and the more individually-minded goals of the movement in America) it still has much to offer contemporary audiences in director James Macdonald's mounting, as both a museum piece (and I mean that in the most positive way) and an engrossing drama.

Beginning as a fantasy, 1982's Marlene (Elizabeth Marvel) is throwing a dinner to celebrate her promotion as the first female executive at the Top Girls employment agency. Her guests are Pope Joan (Martha Plimpton), the 9th Century woman believed to have reigned as pope while disguised as a man; Lady Nijo (Jennifer Ikeda) the 12th Century consort to Japanese Emperor Go-fukakusa whose autobiography was written while spending 20 years traveling through the country as a Buddhist nun; Isabella Bird (Marisa Tomei), the 19th Century world traveler and author; Patient Griselda (Mary Catherine Garrison), a character from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales who accepts cruel and unusual treatment from her husband in order to prove her loyalty and Dulle Griet (Ana Reeder), who, in a 1562 painting by Pieter Bruegel, is depicted as a woman wearing both armor and an apron leading a female army in an attack on Hell.

With Mary Beth Hurt playing their unobtrusive waitress, the cross conversation of the six diners is written to overlap somewhere between symphony and cacophony, with each taking over the melody line at some point to reveal something of their own personal issues that give us clues as to what Marlene faces when the play turns realistic for the second and third acts. When we see her in the workplace, sporting a dramatic short cut and well-accessorized by costume designer Laura Bauer, Marvel's Marlene is a sharp, stylish model of corporate success, crisp and self-satisfied, in a business that drills its female applicants on achieving modest goals through realistic ambitions and conformity.

But first Churchill introduces us to Marlene's not-especially-bright young niece, Angie (Plimpton, very convincing as a troubled adolescent), who plans to run away from her working-class mom, Joyce (Tomei, barely recognizable in her tired, defeated manner), to stay with her exciting aunt. Tom Pye's dreary backyard set and Christopher Akerlind's bleak lighting convey the uninspiring isolation of their home life. As the play flashes backwards for the third act, we learn of family secrets and sacrifices that, for better or worse, helped Marlene become the accomplished woman she is today.

While thick with issues, Top Girls is never overly didactic and often humorous. I'll leave it to the social commentators to decide its relevance in 2008, but as good, solid theatre, it's a winner.

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Elizabeth Marvel; Bottom: Mary Catherine Garrison and Martha Plimpton