Top Girls: 60 Years of Modern Plays

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I believe in the individual. Look at me. Set in the early Thatcher years, Top Girls is a seminal play of the modern theatre, revealing a world of women's experience at a pivotal moment in British history. Told by an eclectic group of historical and modern characters in a continuous conversation across ages and generations it was described by The Guardian as the best British play ever from a woman dramatist. The play opens with an anachronistic dinner party hosted by Marlene, the newly-promoted manager of the Top Girls employment agency. Her guests are five women from the past: a female Pope, a courtesan-cum-nun, a tireless adventurer, an obedient wife from Chaucer and the leader of a charge into hell from a Bruegel painting. The feminist themes introduced by this cacophonous scene echo throughout the more contemporary action of the play, as Churchill uses the setting of the Top Girls agency to allow a glimpse into the lives of several very different working women. The play presents complex questions about a feminism which mimics aggressive, oppressive behaviour, and success which can only be achieved by abandoning family ties to force a way to the top. Top Girls premiered in 1982 at the Royal Court Theatre, London. Methuen Dramas iconic Modern Plays series began in 1959 with the publication of Shelagh Delaneys A Taste of Honey and has grown over six decades to now include more than 1000 plays by some of the best writers from around the world. This new special edition hardback of Top Girls was published to celebrate 60 years of Methuen Dramas Modern Plays in 2019, chosen by a public vote and features a foreword by critic and journalist Ann McFerran.

Reviews

Top Girls has a combination of directness and complexity which keeps you both emotionally and intellectually alert. You can smell life, and at the same time feel locked in an argument with an agile and passionate mind * John Peter, Sunday Times *
Ms Churchill is one of our best writersher play is brilliantly conceived with considerable wit to illuminate the underlying deep human seriousness of her theme * Spectator *
A playwright of genuine audacity and assurance, able to use her considerable wit and intelligence in ways at once unusual, resonant and dramatically riveting -- Benedict Nightingale * New Statesman *
The work build to a superb emotion-draining climax that sent me out of the theatre convinced that this is the best British play ever from a woman dramatist -- Michael Billington * Guardian *

Author Bio

Caryl Churchill is an award-winning playwright, whose plays are renowned for their striking influence upon contemporary British theatre practices. Indicative of her enduring impression upon the theatrical landscape, Churchill has won Obie Awards for her widely celebrated plays Cloud 9 (1979), Top Girls(1982), Serious Money (1987) and A Number (2002). Further cementing her reputation as an outstanding playwright, in 2002 Churchill won an Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement and in 2010 was placed in the American Theatre Hall of Fame. She continues to produce innovative and provocative work, such as Seven Jewish Children - a play for Gaza (2009) and Love and Information (2012), and in January 2016 her latest full-length play, Escaped Alone, opened at the Royal Court Theatre to great acclaim. With an illustrious theatre career that transcends four decades, Caryl Churchill is arguably more than just one of Britain's most revered female playwrights; she is one of Britain's most respected and groundbreaking working today.