Study Guide
17 August – 8 September
Photography by Shane Reid
Table of Contents
Cast/Creative Team .......................................................................................................................... 3
Duration ............................................................................................................................................ 3
Playwright ......................................................................................................................................... 4
Director ............................................................................................................................................. 6
Actor Profiles..................................................................................................................................... 8
Ulli Birvé ........................................................................................................................................ 8
Eileen Darley............................................................................................................................... 10
Synopsis ......................................................................................................................................... 12
Plot.................................................................................................................................................. 14
Dinner Party - Character Profiles .................................................................................................... 16
Pope Joan................................................................................................................................... 16
Dull Gret ...................................................................................................................................... 16
Lady Nijo ..................................................................................................................................... 16
Patient Griselda .......................................................................................................................... 16
Isabella Bird ................................................................................................................................ 17
Themes ........................................................................................................................................... 18
Language and communication........................................................................................................ 18
Style ................................................................................................................................................ 20
Designer.......................................................................................................................................... 21
Interesting Reading......................................................................................................................... 25
Essay Questions ............................................................................................................................. 30
English Questions ....................................................................................................................... 31
Drama Questions ........................................................................................................................ 32
Design......................................................................................................................................... 33
Performance ............................................................................................................................... 33
Immediate Reactions .................................................................................................................. 34
Design Roles............................................................................................................................... 35
Further Resources .......................................................................................................................... 36
References...................................................................................................................................... 36
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
State Theatre Company of South Australia presents
Top Girls
By Caryl Churchill
17 – 8 September, Dunstan Playhouse
Cast/Creative Team
Ulli Birvé ______________________________ Marlene
Eileen Darley ___________________________Isabella/Joyce/Mrs Kidd
Lia Reutens ____________________________Lady Nijo/Win
Antje Guenther _________________________ Pope Joan/Angie
Sally Hildyard __________________________ Dull Gret/Louise
Ksenja Logos ___________________________Patient Griselda/Nell/Jeanine
Carissa Lee ____________________________ Waitress/Kit/Shona
Catherine Fitzgerald _____________________Director
Mary Moore____________________________ Designer
Mark Pennington _______________________ Lighting Designer
Catherine Oates________________________ Composer
Simon Stollery__________________________ Accent Coach
Bridget Samuel _________________________Stage Manager
Kat Braun ______________________________Assistant Stage Manager
Duration
Approx: 160 minutes including interval
DWS performance followed by a 20 – 30 min Q & A session
Warning: Contains coarse language
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Playwright
Caryl Churchill
Caryl Churchill’s plays include Owners; Light Shining in
Buckinghamshire; Traps; Cloud Nine; Top Girls; Fen; Serious Money;
Ice Cream; Mad Forest; The Skriker; Blue Heart; This is a Chair; Far
Away; A Number; Drunk Enough To Say I Love You? and Seven
Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza. Music theatre includes Lives of the
Great Poisoners and Hotel, both with Orlando Gough. Caryl has also
written for radio and television.
Caryl Churchill, author of Top Girls, was born in 1938 and spent most of her childhood years in
London and Montreal. In 1957 she entered the prestigious Oxford University to study English
Literature, and it was there that she first developed her strong interest in drama. Before receiving
her degree in 1960, Churchill had already published and produced three plays. Soon after, she
became well known as a radio dramatist. Her job with the radio producers served as an important
training ground during the 1960s. Churchill wrote many scripts for BBC radio drama until the early
1970s. Meanwhile, she married a man named David Harter and gave birth to three children
between 1963 and 1969.
Her career as a radio dramatist proved very successful and between 1962 and 1973 she
produced eight plays that actively enabled the listener to see and imagine the drama that
Churchill so aptly displayed through a good choice of dialogue, music, and sound effects. Then,
she made the transition to theatre and television in 1972, contributing six new plays to the BBC
by 1981. However, Churchill soon came to the conclusion that television work was very
unsatisfactory compared to theatre work, where she was free to write without the pressures of
politics and society.
In 1972 she got her chance to work with the Royal Court Theatre, which helped bring her into the
sphere of the politically daring and artistically committed. In 1975 Churchill became the first
woman to hold the position of resident dramatist, where she was able to constantly test the limits
and vitality of traditional and orthodox theatre. With her continuous impulse toward theatrical
experimentation, Churchill was able to incorporate expression of feminist insights into
contemporary views, all the while encouraging audiences to actively criticise institutions and
ideologies that had been previously taken for granted, both in theatre and society itself. This
helped to develop Churchill into a feminist-socialist critique of society.
In plays such as Top Girls, Churchill links personal change of a character with large-scale society
change. This underlines her belief in the ordinary person's ability to produce significant changes in
themselves and their environment. Marlene, often considered the main character in Top Girls, can
be said to represent the changing attitude women have for themselves, and also the change
towards them in the working place. The works generated by Churchill have had a lasting effect on
theatrical practices, traditions, gender stereotypes, and social-economical ideals throughout the
past two decades, and until the present day.
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Plays
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Downstairs (1958)
You've No Need to be Frightened (1959)
Having a Wonderful Time (1960)
Easy Death (1960)
The Ants, radio drama (1962)
Lovesick, radio drama (1969)
Identical Twins (1960)
Abortive, radio drama (1971)
Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen, radio drama (1971)
Owners (1972)
Schreber's Nervous Illness, radio drama (1972) - based on Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution (written 1972)
The Judge's Wife, radio drama (1972)
Moving Clocks Go Slow (play), (1973)
Turkish Delight, television drama (1973)
Objections to Sex and Violence (1975)
Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976)
Vinegar Tom (1976)
Traps (1976)
The After-Dinner Joke, television drama (1978)
Seagulls (written 1978)
Cloud Nine (1979)
Three More Sleepless Nights (1980)
Top Girls (1982)
Crimes, television drama (1982)
Fen (1983)
Softcops (1984)
A Mouthful of Birds (1986)
A Heart's Desire (1987).
Serious Money (1987)
Ice Cream (1989)
Hot Fudge (1989)
Mad Forest (1990)
Lives of the Great Poisoners (1991)
The Skriker (1994)
Blue Heart (1997)
Hotel (1997)
This is a Chair (1999)
Far Away (2000)
Thyestes (2001) - translation of Seneca's tragedy
A Number (2002)
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A Dream Play (2005) - translation of August Strindberg's play
Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? (2006)
Bliss (2008)
Seven Jewish Children — a play for Gaza (2009)
Love and Information (2012)
Iraqdoc - Performed with "Advice to Iraqi Women" by Martin Crimp and "Only We
That Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy" by Tony Kushner (2003)
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Director
Catherine Fitzgerald
Catherine is a director, writer and actor. She trained as an actor at
Flinders University Drama Centre (1979 -1982) and worked primarily as
an actor for over 14 years, working in theatre, film and TV. In the early
‘90s she was Artistic Director of Mainstreet Theatre and Artistic Director of
Vitalstatistix National Women’s Theatre from 1996-2002, where she
produced and/or directed over 40 productions and events. For State
Theatre Company she has directed War Mother, The Zoo Story, The
Misanthrope, The Memory of Water, Third World Blues, Proof, Salt,
Boston Marriage, Frozen, The Female of the Species and The Give and
Take.
Her writing credits include: Just a Little Crooked Around the Edge, (Sydney Mardi Gras and Slip of
the Tongue, London), Boo! (Windmill and Mainstreet Theatre), Celebrity Vaudeville (MRPG) and
(it)DRY (Port Augusta Re-Imagines!). Catherine also co-wrote Titbits! and Bull Bar Tours
(Vitalstatistix). In 2003 she was awarded the Centenary Medal for the development of women
artists in South Australia through Vitalstatistix. She is the current State Theatre Company
Associate Director.
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Director's Notes
Top Girls was first staged in 1982 in London by Joint Stock Theatre group. It was ground breaking
in its synthesis of form and content and the manner in which its structure incorporated: interrupted
and overlapping dialogue, parallel conversations and the disruption of chronology. These
techniques have been emulated by contemporary Western playwrights ever since.
Written over thirty years ago and set in England the parallels to contemporary Australia and the
global political-economy are too obvious to be ignored.
Scene One begins as a celebration of the achievements of women against the odds, where the
audience can judge Marlene in the context of centuries-old systems of gender, race, class and
empire. Each of the guests at the dinner party have survived patriarchy within different historical
epochs, and within their own discourse. Churchill then establishes Capitalism as the system in
which the rest of the play takes place.
Set against the backdrop of Margaret Thatcher’s England Top Girls exposes the inequities of
capitalism and its corresponding feminism, where success for individual women does not
automatically equate with benefits for all women. The chances of becoming a ‘Top Girl’ within a
Capitalist system are shown to be rare and the achievements questionable.
In Top Girls Marlene embraces this new ‘enterprise culture’ regardless of the social consequences.
Angie represents the section of society that most needs social support in what appears to be a
hopeless future. Joyce represents a socialist alternative.
The Women’s Liberation Movement was active in Britain throughout the ‘70’s. Feminism had a
huge impact on women in everyday life and on the consciousness of women as a group. Things
were changing rapidly for women: in law, in the media, politics, publishing, the arts, in attitudes to
public morality and in social life. These advances converged with the election of the first British
female Prime Minister.
Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party in 1975. She was the first woman in British
history to hold this position and then went on to win two general elections being Prime Minister
from 1979 -1990. Her government fostered radical right-wing economic policies which had
devastating social consequences.
There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and their families.
(1.11.1987 Margaret Thatcher)
Thatcher’s Government pursued monetarist policies to control inflation, reducing money supply and
public spending. State socialism and the welfare state was all but demolished by the privatisation
of major national industries. The power of unions was broken by the introduction of new legislation
(along with police on horseback with tear gas and rubber bullets) which were sponsored and
supported by Rupert Murdoch and other heads of big multi-national companies. Individual initiative
was stimulated and encouraged by lower direct taxation and the injection of competitive market
forces in many areas of public life. The gap between the haves and have nots grew bigger.
For socialist feminists the contradiction between Thatcher’s individual success as a woman, and
her pro-rich, greed-fuelled policies was anathema. For the working class women and men of Britain
her policies were not only harsh but devastating and destructive. The seeds of Neo Liberalism
were sown.
Sound familiar?
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Actor Profiles
Ulli Birvé
Ulli has performed for various companies in Australia including
Playbox, Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company, Hit
Productions, Sydney Theatre Company, Red Shed and State Theatre
Company, where she last appeared in The Memory of Water in 2009.
She performed in the production Oceans and Utopias in Lisbon for
World Expo (directed by Philipe Genty), and for television her most
recent credits include Offspring, twentysomething, Killing Time and
Something in the Air. Her film credits include Lust and Revenge,
Epsilon and the Life of Harry Dare.
1. Could you describe the character(s) you play and the process you go through when
understanding and developing your role(s)?
Marlene is a strong minded, ambitious individual; she left home at an early age to seek a
“better” life for herself. She believes firmly in the ideologies of Thatcher and the concept
that “anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it.” She sees herself as living proof
having shed her working class background for the fast paced lifestyle of a career woman.
My main entry point for the character is the script – the information Churchill provides. I
include the facts provided by the character herself, the information from others, the
opinions and the rumours. All these elements come together to give a strong sense of
character. I troll for like-minded contemporaries and I consider figures of the time – the
obvious one of course being Thatcher herself.
2. What challenges have you faced during the rehearsal process and how have you overcome
them?
One of the greatest challenges is the overlapping dialogue and keeping one’s thoughts as
fast as the text – a lot of rehearsing is the only way around that one!
3. In the opening scene from the play Marlene celebrates her promotion to Managing Director
of Top Girls Employment Agency by inviting an array of mythical and literary women to a
dinner party. If you could invite any three women to dinner who would they be and why?
Oprah – great gossip, Dawn French or Joanna Lumley – good laugh and San Su Chi –
good political debate.
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
4. Top Girls was first performed at the Royal Court, London in 1982 when Margaret Thatcher
‘The Iron Lady’ was the UK Prime Minister. Given the political and social climate of the time
Caryl Churchill’s feminist views certainly struck a chord. How relevant do you think the play
is to today’s audiences?
Well Australia has it. First female Prime Minister, and while I do believe there has been a
lot of negative focus on her for being female, her policies have sadly let many down.
Furthermore we live in a time that has seen the growth and maturing of Thatcher’s
capitalist ideals into the frightening nightmare that Angie predicted – scary thought as to
where things will be in another 30 years!
5. What do you think audiences will enjoy about this production?
The wonderful debate and thought provoking questions. The humour, the contrast of
styles from the dinner party to the kitchen and the design, and hopefully the great
performances!
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Eileen Darley
Eileen’s experience in theatre and film performance spans 29 years.
On graduating from Flinders University Drama Centre in 1983 she
joined the Troupe Theatre ensemble, then Magpie Theatre Company,
and was subsequently a long-term collective member of Red Shed
Theatre Company. Her innumerable performances at Red Shed
include Carthaginians, All Souls, Because You Are Mine,
Frankenstein’s Children, Dog Eat Dog, Sweetown and In Cahoots.
Eileen has performed extensively for Vitalstatistix and Patch Theatre
and for the Adelaide Festival Centre. Her feature film work includes
performances as Amelia in Serenades and Shirley in Australian Rules.
For State Theatre Company Eileen has appeared in War Mother, The
Misanthrope, Don’s Party, Morning Sacrifice, Three Birds Alighting on
a Field, Arabian Nights, Salt, Jonah and Carrying Light.
Eileen also works as a singer, crossing the genres of folk, jazz and
cabaret. She has performed in many music theatre pieces, including
most recently Melissa Reeve’s Tough Girls (Vitalstatistix), Rockin’ the
Boat (2009 Port Festival and 2010 Waterside) and A Night With the
Flying Horses (2010 Adelaide Cabaret Festival) with Darley, Day and
Tin Can Alley.
1. Could you describe the character(s) you play and the process you go through when
understanding and developing your role(s)?
I play Isabella Bird, 19th Century Victorian traveller who was the first European woman to
travel extensively to many places including Hawaii, the Rocky Mountains, Japan and
Morocco.
I also have a cameo role as Mrs Kidd, a very middle-class housewife whose husband has
just been beaten to Managing Director by Marlene. Finally I play Joyce, sister to Marlene
and mother to Angie.
For Isabella I read a lot of her letters sent from her various destinations to her sister
Hennie. I also read a biography and re-capped my understanding of Victorian norms and
social mores.
Joyce carries the socialist argument in the play. She is a working-class woman who has a
strong class consciousness
2. What challenges have you faced during the rehearsal process and how have you overcome
them?
Learning 3 different accents and making them believable! The play demands tremendous
focus/concentration particularly because of the overlapping dialogue and quickfire
dialogue.
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
3. In the opening scene from the play Marlelne celebrates her promotion to Managing
Director of Top Girls Employment Agency by inviting an array of mythical and literary
women to a dinner party. If you could invite any three women to dinner who would they be
and why?
a) Rose Luxembourg – a great thinker, advocate for the working class and woman who
gave her life to make the world a better place. b) Nina Simone – the greatest singer ever! c)
Melissa Reeves – magnificent playwright, best friend.
4. Top Girls was first performed at the Royal Court, London in 1982 when Margaret Thatcher
‘The Iron Lady’ was the UK Prime Minister. Given the political and social climate of the time
Caryl Churchill’s feminist views certainly struck a chord. How relevant do you think the play
is to today’s audiences?
The play marks the beginning of neo-liberal policies which began the dismantling of social
services, nationalised industries and the welfare state. 30 years later in Europe and the US
(and the economists predict it is coming to Australia) the excesses of market-based
capitalism have seen the destabilising of economies around the world. The damage to
ordinary people’s lives through unemployment, decreased public services (including
education and health) and so on have hit with the same vengeance as they did in
Thatcher’s England, political unrest, public bailouts of the rich, making the poor pay for the
lifestyles of the rich. I can’t think of a more relevant play through which to look at the last
30 years, particularly filtered through the experience of women.
5. What do you think audiences will enjoy about this production?
I hope the audience will enjoy the array of historic characters, their differences, their
various neuroses and the comedy that comes through clashing them up against each
other. Churchill is concerned with being as truthful as she can and from truth comes
comedy.
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Synopsis
The play opens in a restaurant, where Marlene is waiting for some friends to arrive. She is
throwing a dinner party to celebrate her promotion at the employment agency where she works.
As the women arrive and start the meal, they begin to talk about their lives and what they did.
Each of her guests is a historical, fictional or mythical woman who faced adversity and suffered
bitterly to attain her goals. Lady Nijo recalls how she came to meet the ex-Emperor of Japan, and
her encounter with him. While the rest of the women understand the encounter as rape, she
explains that she saw it as her destiny; the purpose for which she was brought up. Within the
context of Pope Joan's narrative, the women discuss religion. At this point the waitress, who
punctuates the scene with interruptions, has already brought the starter and is preparing to serve
the main courses. All the women except Marlene discuss their dead lovers. They also recall the
children that they bore and subsequently lost. Nijo’s baby was of royal blood, so he couldn’t be
seen with her. Pope Joan was stoned to death when it was discovered that she had given birth
and was therefore female and committing heresy. Griselda was told that her two children had
been killed, in a cruel test of her loyalty to her husband. After dessert, the women sit drinking
brandy, unconsciously imitating their male counterparts.
In Act Two, Scene One, Marlene is at the agency where she works, interviewing a girl named
Jeanine. Marlene takes a fancy to her even though she seems lost and helpless. She doesn’t
know what type of job she wants—only that she wants to travel and be with her husband.
Scene Two begins with two girls, Angie and Kit, playing in Angie's backyard. Angie is abrasive
and argumentative with both her friend and her mother, Joyce. She and Kit fight and Angie says
she is going to kill her mother. Kit doesn’t believe her, and they start to talk about sex. Angie
accuses Kit's mother of sleeping around, but it becomes apparent that neither of them know what
they are talking about; Kit is only 12 and Angie is quite immature for her sixteen years.
In the third scene, the action returns to the “Top Girls” employment agency, where Nell and Win
are sharing the latest office gossip, until Marlene arrives. Win meets Louise, a client who after
conscientiously working for many years at the same firm is deciding to quit. She slowly opens up
to Win, describing how she had dedicated her life to her job, working evenings at the expense of
her social life, without reward. She has found herself at 46, with no husband or life outside of
work, in a position where she trains men who are consistently promoted over her. The action then
switches to Marlene’s office where Angie arrives, having taken the bus from Joyce's house in the
country. She is shy and awkward and her presence is clearly an unwelcome surprise to Marlene,
who nevertheless offers to let Angie stay at her place overnight. They are interrupted by Mrs.
Kidd, the wife of Howard, who was passed up for promotion in favour of Marlene. Mrs. Kidd tells
Marlene how much the job means to her husband, how devastated he is, and questions whether
she should be doing a 'man’s job'. It becomes clear that she is asking Marlene to step down and
let her husband have the job instead, which Marlene firmly declines to do. She tries to clear Mrs.
Kidd out of her office, but Mrs. Kidd only becomes more insistent until Marlene finally screams at
her to “piss off". Meanwhile, Shona arrives in Nell's office looking for job opportunities. At first
Nell is impressed by her surprisingly accomplished resume, but quickly figures out that Shona is
under aged and making it all up as she goes. At the same time, Angie is having a conversation
with Win about Angie's aunt and Win’s life, but falls asleep in the middle of Win's story. Nell
comes in with the news that Howard has had a heart attack. Marlene is informed but is
unperturbed, and Nell responds “Lucky he didn’t get the job if that’s what his health's like”.
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
The final act takes place a year earlier in Joyce’s kitchen. Marlene, Joyce and Angie share stories
with each other. Angie is very happy that her aunt (Marlene) is there, since she looks up to her and
thinks that she is wonderful. Shortly before Angie goes to bed, Marlene pulls a bottle of whiskey
out of her bag to drink with Joyce. As they drink, they discuss what is to become of Angie. With
brutal honesty, Joyce tells Marlene that Angie is neither particularly bright nor talented and it is
unlikely that she will ever make anything of herself. Marlene tries to brush this off, saying that
Joyce is just running Angie down, as this sober reality contradicts Marlene's conservative
mentality. It is revealed that Angie is actually Marlene's daughter, whom she abandoned to
Joyce's care, possibly causing Joyce to lose the child she was carrying from the stress.
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Plot
Act One
The opening act is possibly the most difficult to understand. The working woman of the present is
represented by Marlene, and references to the roles and rights of women across the world and
throughout time are shown through female historical figures from different periods and places.
They come together over dinner in a restaurant, where Marlene hosts the meal to celebrate her
promotion to Managing Director of the Top Girls employment agency. (A suspension of disbelief is
needed by the audience to take in the collision between different worlds in this scene; after all,
drama does not necessarily have to be naturalistic and true or accurate to life).
As the guests continue to arrive, the conversation starts the way it carries on. The women talk
over each other and do not appear to be listening to each other's stories. This raises issues about
a lack of solidarity and support amongst women and the repressed truth of each woman's
experience. Here the characters are on a mission to tell their life story: each woman has a history
to tell, and each does get a short period of uninterrupted speech, where they lay open their
eventful lives. Note how some, like Lady Nijo and Griselda, do not question what the men in their
lives have subjected them to until other women prompt them to do so. The identity of women, of
individuals and the group identity are presented as topics to consider.
Act Two
Jeanine comes to Marlene's agency to find work: she is currently a secretary. Marlene and
Jeanine's thoughts are in very different places. Jeanine seems lacking in career ambition, her
main goal being to save for her wedding, but she would like to travel. Marlene tries to put words
into Jeanine's mouth, and reveals that for a woman, success in the workplace is very much at the
mercy of being seen as single, and a reliable employee, conscious of personal presentation whilst
rejecting marriage and children. The jobs, which Marlene offers Jeanine, are within what we would
regard as female arenas, and are limited in what they offer- they are all assistant's posts, quite far
from the top of the company. Marlene is not really concerned to act in Jeanine's best interests.
The scene shifts to Joyce's backyard, whom we later discover is Marlene's sister. Joyce's
daughter Angie bullies Kit, who is her playmate, despite the age difference between them. Angie
is obviously unhappy with her life with Joyce, and speaks of her harshly. Generally, she swears
and uses crude language and gestures. At one point she suggests that Marlene is actually her
mother. Joyce is concerned about Angie and exerts control over her in various parental ways;
there is real difficulty and resentment in the mother-daughter relationship. Joyce sees Angie's
future as one with few options except marriage because of her lack of qualifications.
Win and Nell discuss their weekends, and Win's married lover. They are quite detached in their
conversation and attitude towards others, no matter what their relationship to them. They speak
dismissively of Howard Kidd, who lost out on the post of Managing Director to Marlene, and
express their pride in Marlene as an ambitious woman. Churchill questions the choice in these
women's relationships, as Win acknowledges that if her affair became public, it would end. She
regards it as fun, but ultimately has no right to decision making in her relationship.
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Win interviews Louise, a competent worker in her 40's who feels unappreciated in middle
management while young men are promoted above her. Win is positive about age bringing
experience, although Louise feels threatened by a new generation of working women, who seem
more go-getting.
Angie arrives in the main office and the distance between her and Marlene is evident. Howard's
wife interrupts, criticising the decision to promote a woman over her husband. The scene cuts to
another interview, where Shona lies about her experience to gain employment. Marlene's closing
comment on Angie is a judgement regarding her lack of prospects in life.
Act Three
We travel back in time, to a year earlier. Marlene is visiting her sister and Angie (note the different
settings, office and domestic, that the women are placed in). We discover that Angie is in fact
Marlene's child, whom she gave up to Joyce in favour of pursuing her own career. She later had
two abortions. Her motivation was to escape the background in which she and her sister grew up.
While caring for Angie, Joyce miscarried her own child, so there is resentment all round. The
distance between the two sisters is personal and political: Joyce resents her sister's lifestyle and
lack of commitment to her parents and child/niece. Both have different perspectives on their
parents' lives: Marlene looks back on their father as a violent drunkard, while Joyce sees a wider
social perspective where their parents were both trapped economically, with problems arising
from that. This is typical of their political views: Marlene is concerned for the individual,
particularly the female, while Joyce sees a more socialist argument. At this point Marlene stands
up for Angie against Joyce's criticisms. The Act ends dramatically with a statement from Angie:
we are aware of her environment and relationship with both her mothers, and the impact these
have on her: her life is 'frightening'.
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Dinner Party - Character Profiles
Pope Joan
Pope Joan is two of Marlene's dinner party guests in Act one, Scene one, and the fourth to arrive.
Pope Joan is somewhat aloof, making relevant, intellectual declarations throughout the
conversation. When the topic turns to religion, she cannot help but point out heresies—herself
included—though she does not attempt to convert the others to her religion. Joan reveals some of
her life. She began dressing as a boy at age twelve so she could continue to study; she lived the
rest of her life as a man, though she had male lovers. Joan was eventually elected pope. She
became pregnant by her chamberlain lover and delivered her baby during a papal procession. For
this, Joan was stoned to death. At the end of the scene, Joan recites a passage in Latin.[2] Like all
the dinner guests, Joan's life and attitude reflects something about Marlene. Joan reflects aspects
of Marlene's life style.
Dull Gret
The subject of the Painting "Dulle Griet" by Pieter Breughel, in which a woman wearing an apron
and armed with tools of male aggression - armor, helmet, and sword - leads a mob of women into
Hell, fighting the devils and filling her basket with gold cups. In the Play she eats crudely and
steals bottles and plates when no one is looking, putting these in her large apron. Throughout
most of the dinner scene, Dull Gret has little to say, making crude remarks such as "Bastard" and
"Big cock". Her rare monosyllabic interjections are coarse, reductive and amusing and her relative
silence adds an element of suspense up to the point where she recounts the tale of her invasion.
Lady Nijo
Lady Nijo is a thirteenth century Japanese concubine who enters the play near the beginning of
act one and proceeds to tell her tale. As the most materialistic of the women, she is influenced by
period of time before she became a wandering nun than by the time she spends as a holy
woman. We are led to believe it is her social conditioning that Churchill is condemning, not her
character, as she is brought up in such a way that she cannot even recognise her own
prostitution.
Patient Griselda
Patient Griselda is one of Marlene’s dinner guests in Act One. She is the last to show up to the
party, so Marlene and the other characters in the scene order without her. Historically, Griselda
first came into prominence when Chaucer adapted her (from earlier texts by Boccaccio) for a
story in The Canterbury Tales called "The Clerk's Tale.” In Chaucer’s tale, and also in Top Girls,
Griselda is chosen to be the wife of the Marquis, even though she is only a poor peasant girl. The
one condition that he gives her is that she must promise to always obey him. After they have been
married for several years, Griselda gives birth to a baby girl. When the baby turns six weeks old
the Marquis tells Griselda that she has to give it up, so she does. Four years later Griselda gives
birth to a son. She has to also give this child up after two years because it angers the other
members of the court. Twelve years after she gave up her last child, the Marquis tells her to go
home, which she obeys.[3] The Marquis then comes to Griselda’s father’s house and instructs her
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to start preparing his palace for his wedding. Upon her arrival she sees a young girl and boy and it
is revealed that these are her children.
All of this suffering was a trial to test her obedience to the Marquis.[4] When she recounts her tale
at dinner with the other women it appears in an accurate but slightly shortened form. At dinner
with Marlene, Griselda says that she understands her husband’s need for complete obedience,
but it would have been nicer if he had not done what he did. She spends much of her time
defending her husband’s actions against Lady Nijo’s accusations concerning his character.
Isabella Bird
Isabella Bird is the first dinner guest to arrive at Marlene’s celebration. In real life as discussed
throughout the first act of the play Isabella is a world traveler. What the play does not mention is
that she wrote several books, including An English Woman In America, A Lady’s Life In The Rocky
Mountains, and Among the Tibetans. Her adventures take her to all corners of the world. At dinner
Isabella tells everyone that she was first instructed to travel by a doctor who thought it would
improve her poor health. Following this advice she took her first trip, a sea voyage to America in
1854. As mentioned in the play, she lived with her mother and her younger sister for a long time,
Henrietta Bird, who she often talks about with great affection throughout the dinner party. She
also mentions Jim Nugent at the party, a man with whom she spent quite a bit of time in America.
Outside of the play, Jim was in love with Isabella but she never paid attention to his advances. In
real life she once wrote in a letter to her sister “He is a man any woman might love, but no sane
woman would marry.” Jim would later be found murdered. Isabella is an interesting character at
the dinner party in the play, because she seems to have the most in common with Marlene.
Isabella, like Marlene, did not marry young because of her career, but later married Dr. John
Bishop, who died two days before their 5th anniversary. She refers to him as "my dear husband
the doctor" but, despite her love for her husband, is still disappointed with marriage itself ("I did
wish marriage had seemed more of a step"). Isabella gets the last words in act 1 and continues to
discuss her final travels to Morocco.
From left to right: Marlene, Isabella Bird, Pope Joan, Lady Nijo, Dull Gret and Patient Griselda.
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Themes
The play is set in the Britain of the early 1980's and examines the issue of what it means to be a
successful woman; initially using 'historical' characters to explore different aspects of womens'
'social achievement'. Churchill has stated that the play was inspired by her conversations with
American feminists: it comments on the contrast between American feminism, which celebrates
individualistic women who acquire power and wealth, and British socialist feminism, which
involves collective group gain. In addition, there is also a commentary on Margaret Thatcher, the
then Prime Minister, who celebrated personal achievement and believed in free-market capitalism
(Thatcherism). Marlene the tough career woman is portrayed as soulless, exploiting other women
and suppressing her own caring side in the cause of success. The play argues against the style of
feminism that simply turns women into new patriarchs and argues for a feminism where womens'
instinct to care for the weak and downtrodden is more prominent. The play questions whether it is
possible for women in society to combine a successful career with a thriving family life.
Language and communication
The abrupt nature of the utterances in Top Girls reflects a style of playwriting that is more modern,
where a short sentence can be loaded with meaning. The minimal use of words lays bare the main
issues while allowing much dramatic effect through their simplicity. There is more strength in what
is not said, and the clarity of speech does not mean that there are less issues to decode.
The language of misogyny, appropriated by women, is apparent in Joyce's swearing at Angie that
she is a 'cunt'. The use of strong language serves to shock, and alongside the use of vocabulary
and knowledge of the character's backgrounds, reinforces the class of Marlene and her family. In
Angie's case, it shows how Joyce's attitudes and ways of speaking affect her, and is also a
response to her hurt feelings.
Pope Joan's use of Latin is interesting: Latin has been known as the language of learning, with
influence on different languages, especially in the fields concerning medicine, the law and
education. Education in Latin was denied to women during medieval times. In speaking Latin to a
modern audience, and to her own immediate audience, Joan is alienating others. Her meaning is
not important: it is the fragmented nature of the conversation and isolated experience that is
reinforced.
The lack of support that women give each other is evident at the dinner party hosted by Marlene,
where the women do not really consider each other's stories. Marlene acts as a modern female
host, reminiscent of the Host of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, bringing together diverse people
who tell a story but who only tell a story for their own reasons, and for the audience's
contemplation, not to share in each other's stories.
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Feminism
Feminism is a much-maligned word these days. It is associated with an image that is negative
and, quite simply, wrong. Feminists are not man-haters, and nor do they support the idea of
inequality between the sexes through a simple realignment of power boundaries. Their aim
seemed to be a greater equality, where the dispossessed could begin to exist on a level that had
existed for the dominant culture for thousands of years. Churchill, however, wants to explore the
achievements of the previous generation, and look at what they gained and lost.
Each character's experience is different, and most do not consider how they may have been
badly affected by societies, which allow men to control their lives and happiness. Churchill
critiques the rights that women have gained and their place in society: she questions whether
these rights have brought women independence, opportunity and happiness, or simply defined
women in a different way, giving them more options but allowing them less rights concerning
decision making, as they try to combine work and personal lives. She questions what feminism is,
and whether people who claim they want equal rights are actually acting in the best interests of
women - or not. She also highlights the damage that can be done through in fighting, where two
separate factions can pull in opposite directions, thereby reducing the potential for achievement.
Socialism
Churchill looks at the idea of a society that has broken down to concentrate on the individual. The
Thatcher Government believed in achieving a successful economy above all, involving
privatisation and loss of publicly owned services. She once claimed that there was no such thing
as society any more, merely individuals. The effects of being working class within such an
economy and affected by such an ideology of individualism are explored. Churchill looks at the
effects of Marlene and Joyce's upbringing upon their choices in life, and how their choices affect
Angie. She makes it clear that a lack of money has created difficulties for the different generations
of their family, and will continue to do so.
Equality
Churchill demonstrates that attitudes and ambitions need to change to achieve true equality.
However, she also highlights the difficulty in reconciling people's different aims within one society,
where many of them appear conflicting. She also explores the concept of equality between
supposed equals, not just in terms of the battle between the sexes. For example, it is apparent
that Marlene cannot support anyone with values and priorities different to hers. Neither she nor
Joyce support their daughter. Mrs Kidd dismisses women in her motivation for supporting her
husband. Each woman is concerned with her own personal life above the wellbeing of her rights.
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Style
The play is famous for its dreamlike opening sequence in which Marlene meets famous women
from history, including Pope Joan, who, disguised as a man, is said to have been pope between
854-856; the explorer Isabella Bird; Dull Gret the harrower of Hell; Lady Nijo, the Japanese
mistress of an emperor and later a Buddhist nun; and Patient Griselda, the patient wife from The
Clerk's Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. All of these characters behave like a gang of
city career women out on the town and get increasingly drunk and maudlin, as it is revealed that
each has suffered in similar ways.
The stories of the historical women parallel the characters in the modern-day story. For example,
Bird, like Marlene, got to where she was by leaving her sister to deal with family matters. Dull
Gret's monosyllabic inarticulacy is comparable to Angie's. Some of these parallels are
emphasised by the actors doubling the roles of the historical and modern characters.
The structure of the play is unconventional (non-linear). In Act one, Scene one, Marlene is
depicted as a successful businesswoman, and all her guests from different ages celebrate her
promotion in the 'Top Girls' employment agency. In the next scene we jump to the present day
(early 1980s) where we see Marlene at work in the surprisingly masculine world of the female staff
of the agency, in which the ladies of 'Top Girls' must be tough and insensitive in order to compete
with men. In the same act, the audience sees Angie's angry, helpless psyche and her loveless
relationship with Joyce, whom the girl hates and dreams of killing. Only in the final scene, which
takes place a year before the office scenes, does the audience hear that Marlene, not Joyce, is
Angie's mother. This notion, as well as the political quarrel between the sisters shifts the
emphasis of the play and formulates new questions.
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Designer
Mary Moore
Mary has designed productions for theatre, opera and dance
companies in the UK and Australia over the last 30 years. Her
designs in South Australia include Buried Child, The Give and Take,
The Memory of Water, Maestro, Architektin, The Female of the
Species and Honk If You Are Jesus (State Theatre Company), Parri
Passu, Escape, Hooked, Shimmer and Swerve (LWD), Klinghoffer,
Akhnaten, Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha (Leigh Warren and
Dancers and The Adelaide Vocal Group) and Afternoon of the Elves
(Windmill Theatre).
Since receiving an Australia Council Fellowship, Mary has created experimental works Masterkey
(commissioned by the 1998 Adelaide Festival) and Exile, which premiered in the 2000 Sydney
Spring Festival and was performed in the 2000 Shanghai International Festival. She was the
creative director and designer of The Memory Museum, a multi-media installation commissioned
for the Centenary of Federation Celebrations. In 2007 she exhibited a four screen video
installation ‘memento mori’ in the exhibition Undiscovered Country at the Adelaide Festival Centre
Artspace Gallery. She received the 2010 Ruby Award for Sustained Contribution by an Individual.
Top Girls set and costume design
An insight by directing assistant Nescha Jelk
1. Can you tell us about Mary’s process as a Designer and how she worked with the
Director Catherine Fitzgerald to develop ideas for Top Girls.
The set needs to be able to serve a variety of functional, conceptual and aesthetic purposes.
Firstly, Catherine and Mary met regularly to
• Talk and decide on a conceptual idea or theme that they were interested in exploring
through the set and costumes.
• Collect and share images that they found interesting and aesthetically inspiring for the
production.
• Discuss and agree on the various functions that the set would need to be able to perform
(for example, the flying pope).
Once Catherine and Mary had agreed on a direction for the overall design, Mary created a
miniature scale version of the designed set, called a model box. She also drew a series of designs
for the costume. Catherine gave Mary some feedback and together they made a few changes to
the initial designs before presenting them to the company.
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2. What were Mary’s influences in designing this piece?
Mary has been greatly influenced by the term ‘glass ceiling’ which is sometimes used in feminist
discourse. This metaphor is used to describe an invisible barrier that can stop someone from
being able to get a top, high-ranking job; an individual works their way up to a certain point of
hierarchy, and promotion appears to be within reach, but is unattainable. Many women felt that no
matter how hard they worked, they could not get a top job in their profession due to gender
discrimination. Louise, who applies for a job at Marlene’s employment agency, is an example a
woman who felt like she was stuck beneath a metaphorical glass ceiling.
LOUISE: ...I had management status at twenty-seven and you’ll appreciate what that
means. I’ve built up a department. And there it is, it works extremely well, and I feel I’m
stuck there. I’ve spent twenty years in middle management. I’ve seen young men who I
trained go on, in my own company or elsewhere, to higher things.
Margaret Thatcher became England’s first female Prime Minister in 1979, and held the position
through the eighties until 1990. She led the government with a free-market capitalist agenda,
pulling back funding on social welfare and increasing taxes, at a time of recession. In the year that
Top Girls was written, in 1982, unemployment was over 3 million (the lowest it had been since the
Great Depression of 1913) but was starting to show signs of economic recovery.
Marlene shares some of Thatcher’s free-market beliefs.
MARLENE: ...I don’t believe in class. Anyone can do anything if they’ve got what it
takes.
JOYCE: And if they haven’t?
MARLENE: If they’re stupid, lazy and frightened, I’m not going to help them get a job, why
should I?
As a result of social welfare cuts, women like Joyce and Angie struggled financially, leaving them
with precarious and uncertain futures with little chance of escape.
Meanwhile, as free-market capitalism flourished, and the effects of the 70’s feminist movements
were beginning to be felt, women like Marlene were beginning to break through the glass ceiling
to the top jobs. Her promotion is Caryl Churchill’s example of this changing socio-political
landscape.
MARLENE: I think the eighties are going to be stupendous.
JOYCE: Who for?
MARLENE: For me. I think I’m going up up up.
Mary Moore has included a glass ceiling in the set of Top Girls to demonstrate each character’s
success or difficulty of rising to a position of high professional status.
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In the opening dinner party scene, the glass ceiling is completely shattered; Mary believes that
these prominent historical characters that Marlene invited to the restaurant have all broken
beyond the metaphorical glass ceiling at some point in their lives. During the office scenes, a
single pane of the broken glass is raised to demonstrate Marlene’s success (and her colleagues’
failures) at being promoted into higher positions at the employment agency. On the other hand,
the glass ceiling is unbroken in the scenes set at Joyce and Angie’s house as they have no hope
of bettering their socio-economic status.
3. What were the challenges in designing this piece?
The aesthetics of Joyce’s unassuming kitchen and backyard needs to be a stark juxtaposition to
Marlene’s flashy employment agency office, to demonstrate their different levels of wealth.
Therefore the set needs to be able to transform quickly and efficiently between ‘poor’ and
‘wealthy’ locations that have vastly different aesthetics. Changing the design between these
extremes in such a short period of time can be challenging to do effectively.
4. There are a great deal of costumes required for this play both period and contemporary.
What was Mary’s process when creating such a diverse array of garments to fit within the
overall design concept and how did she approach this task?
Research is the first step for Mary on almost all of her projects. I was a student of Mary’s for a
number of years at Flinders Drama Centre, and she was always insistent that we did a lot of
research. Mary’s research allows her to do two key things:
• Gain knowledge and learn the ‘rules’ of each fashion period represented in the play. For
example, Mary has taken inspiration from what was called ‘power dressing’ in the eighties,
which is infamous for being a fashion trend where big shoulder pads were a popular and
trendy accessory. Shoulder pads broadened women’s shoulders, thus giving them a slightly
masculine appearance. This is significant in a time when women were trying to carve a place
for themselves in office environments that were still dominated by men.
• ‘Break’ the rules. Mary has added her own personal touch to the costume design of
Marlene’s dinner guests, while still taking inspiration from their period’s fashions. For
example, Mary researched Japanese courtesan’s clothes in the 1200’s. This research
strongly informed her choices for Nijo’s costume, but also meant that Mary could change
certain parts of the Japanese courtesan aesthetic to suit her overall design.
5. Mary recently designed State Theatre Company’s production of Buried Child by Sam
Shepard which was set in one location. Top Girls has many locations throughout the piece.
How did she approach this?
Mary has used a rear projector to quickly change setting. This means, that we can move from the
impressive skyline view of London at night to Joyce’s bleak backyard during the day quickly and
efficiently. Lighting is also essential for these location shifts, the quality and colour of light quickly
tells the audience what time of day it is and whether the characters are inside or outside.
Each piece of furniture and each prop on a set is a strong signifier - the shape, colour, design,
texture, placement and size of an object can communicate many things about a setting to an
audience. Therefore, Mary always has a minimum number of set items on stage to ensure quick
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scene changes, but each item is meticulously chosen so that it clearly represents the desired
location. For example, one couch and dining table in the final immediately tells the audience that
we are in an open space living room. The style and quality of the table and couch then tells the
audience a bit about the characters that they belong to - Joyce and Angie.
Lastly, Mary has also designed set items that can be used for multiple scenes. The one long
curved table in the restaurant scene is separated into three small desks for the office scenes.
Furthermore, a few small signifier items, like telephones, desk chairs, and a coffee station
immediately change the location for the audience.
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Interesting Reading
Background information to Top Girls
Set at the time it was written, the early 1980's, Top Girls is mainly concerned with two political
agendas: feminism and socialism. It may seem surprising to us today that just over thirty years
ago the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act in the UK came into legal existence. The
1960's and 1970's were an important time for the development of women's rights. Various laws
reformed the working and personal lives of women. Contraception became available on the NHS
(National Health Service in the UK) in 1974, and the 1967 Abortion Act had made access to
abortion easier. The Equal Pay Act (1970) and the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act brought
opportunities for equalities in the workplace and the world of education and the media. These
play important roles in the lives of the modern characters of Top Girls.
Caryl Churchill was born in England but lived in Montreal for a period, and upon her return
resented the capitalist class system in place in England. Her desire was also for gender equality.
Top Girls contains only female characters, but the play focuses upon social and male influences
upon them. The play covers the period between 854 and 1982, and explores the notion of
inequality throughout the lives of many different societies and cultures, of which gender plays a
large role. Churchill also critiques the role of the modern woman and the values of modern
society, using echoes of the ideology of the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher to
highlight inequalities.
Timeline
Politics 1970 - 1990
1970
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1978
1979
1980
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
Equal Pay Act Election of the Conservative Edward Heath as prime minister
‘Bloody Sunday’; direct rule of Northern Island begins
Britain joins EEC (European Economic Community)
Election of Labour Harold Wilson as prime minister
Margaret Thatcher elected leader of the Conservative party
Harold Wilson resigns as prime minister; James Callaghan elected
Conservatives’ campaign slogan is ‘Labour Isn’t working’
‘Winter of Discontent’: massive strikes of public services
Election of Conservative Margaret Thatcher as first female prime minister
Republican Ronald Regan elected US president
Falklands War: Argentina invades the Falkland Islands, Britain recaptures them: Thatcher’s
popularity is high
General Election: Conservative majority
IRA Bomb attempts to assassinate Thatcher
Regan re-elected US president
Mikhail Gorbachev becomes leader of USSR
US raid on Lybia
Conservatives re-elected
Cuts on income tax
George Bush elected US president
Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer, resigns
Thatcher resigns as prime minster; John Major (Conservative) replaces her
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Society 1970 – 1990
1970
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1981
1982
1984
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
Feminist protest at Miss World Contest
Watergate Scandal begins in Washington DC
First Miners’ Strike
UK unemployment passes 1 million
Fuel shortages
USA: Roe v Wade
National Health Service offers free family planning
Saigon passes to the Communists, end of USA involvement in Vietnam
High-speed Concorde planes fly from London to New York
Race riots in Brixton and other urban areas
Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp formed
British unemployment over 3 million
US Equal Rights Amendment fails
Greenham Common cleared by police
Miners’ Strike
Chernobyl nuclear disaster in USSR
‘Black Monday’: Stock exchange falls, allegations of illegal share dealing at Guinness
AIDS crisis intensifies
Airplane explosion over Lockerbie, Scotland
Tiananmen Square massacre
Fall of the Berlin Wall
Trafalgar Square riot against the Poll Tax
Culture 1970 – 1990
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1979
Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch published
Churchill’s Abortive and Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen (radio)
Owners premieres at the Royal Court Theatre
Almost Free Theatre Women’s Festival
Founding of Joint Stock and Women’s Theatre Group
Founding of Monstrous Regiment and The Women’s Press
Churchill’s Light Shining on Buckinghamshire and Vinegar Tom
Churchill’s Cloud Nine
Max Stafford-Clark appointed as the Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre
1981 Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer’s wedding
Nell Dunn’s Steaming
1982 Churchill’s Top Girls premieres at the Royal Court Theatre
1983 Churchill’s Fen
Sarah Daniel’s Masterpieces, debate over pornography ensues
1984 Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ released
1985 Live Aid rock festival to produce relief to Africa
1987 Churchill’s Serious Money
1988 Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good
1990 Churchill’s Mad Forest
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British Council – Literature
Critical Perspective by Dr Peter Buse, 2003
For more than thirty years, Caryl Churchill has been combining social commitment
with theatrical experimentation.
Rarely in modern British drama has the combination been so fruitful. Her play-writing career
began in radio in the 1960s, encompasses numerous acclaimed stage plays, and from the
1990s, has moved more and more into a mixed theatre of text, dance, and music. In other
words, Churchill has traversed the dramatic spectrum, from word and sound alone in her
radio plays, to a greater and greater emphasis on space and movement in her more recent
work.
What themes, then, run across this tremendously varied oeuvre? Churchill's dramaturgy is
above all the staging of desire, and more particularly the desires of those members of
society who are least able to realise them. These desires are sometimes erotic, they are
almost always political. They are desires which social and political structures are unwilling
to accommodate - the desires of the oppressed, and most often, of women. The drama is
in the thwarting of desire, in the betrayal, in Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1978) of the
utopian hopes of the Ranters and Levellers by the Cromwellian party during the English
Civil War and, in Mad Forest (1990), the similar sense of incomplete revolution after the
overthrow of the Romanian dictator Ceausescu in 1989. The longing for a different relation
between the sexes is expressed with some optimism in Vinegar Tom (1978) and Cloud Nine
(1979), but with less assuredness in Top Girls (1982) and Fen (1983). Always with Churchill
there is the sense that exorbitant, utopian desires must be explored, but at the same time a
recognition of the obstacles they come up against. Perhaps as a result of this frustration,
many of her plays stage a near frenzy of anti-social passion: A Mouthful of Birds (1986),
inspired by Euripides' Bacchae, takes as its theme possession by spirits; Serious Money
(1987), commercially and critically one of Churchill's most successful plays, satirises the
ferociously Bacchanalian behaviour of stockbrokers and City traders; Lives of the Great
Poisoners (1998) charts in song and dance the murderous paths of four prisoners from
different epochs; and the title character in The Skriker (1994) is a sort of wish-granting
demon who alternately satisfies and torments two teenage girls.
Churchill is often thought of as a playwright who writes on historical themes, but among her
stage plays this is only really the case for a series of pieces produced between the mid1970s and mid-1980s. The sequence begins with Vinegar Tom and Light Shining in
Buckinghamshire, two plays set in seventeenth-century England, but with resonances with
the present. Making extensive use of documentary material, both plays tackle historical
subjects that have a high profile in the popular imagination of history - the persecution of
witches and the English Civil War - and both challenge popular perceptions of these
events. Just as in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, the persecution of witches in Vinegar Tom is
seen as a convenient displacement of other social issues. Unlike Miller's version, which
paints women as treacherous accusers, Churchill's feminist revision emphasises how socalled witches were punished precisely because they were women: women 'on the edges of
society, old, poor, single, sexually unconventional'. Light Shining, meanwhile, reminds its
audience of the radicality of those 'left of Parliament' who were the real losers in the Civil
War. Neither play has a central protagonist or hero(ine), because Churchill is less
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concerned with portraying the fate of individuals, than with that of groups. There are clear
parallels in both plays with Fen, a play set in contemporary East Anglia which dramatises
the circumstances of a largely female agricultural workforce who, unlike the characters in
Light Shining, have no 'revolutionary belief in the millennium' to stoke their political
energies.
Churchill's next two 'historical' plays, Cloud Nine and Top Girls, are among her most
frequently stage and commented upon plays, possibly because of the freely anachronistic
methods they use to make theatrical points. Cloud Nine asks how much attitudes to sexual
behaviours have changed between 1879 and 1979. One act is devoted to each epoch imperial Africa and modern London - with the same characters appearing in both, having
aged just twenty-five years for the second act. While the rigidly patriarchal arrangements of
the Victorian era have been loosened, Churchill suggests that we would be foolish to
assume that our 'liberated' era is without its prejudices and power arrangements. Top Girls,
meanwhile, abandons any claims to historical accuracy by bringing together in its opening
scene five women from very different historical periods and cultural backgrounds in order
to celebrate the promotion of a modern woman, Marlene. The dinner party, a theatrical tour
de force, celebrates the achievements and struggles of the six women and ends in drunken
mayhem. The rest of the play, set in the present, questions the celebration of the first
scene by examining the fate of undereducated, labouring women left in the wake of the
Thatcherite individualism that enabled Marlene's success. Completing Churchill's quintet of
historical plays is Softcops (written 1978, produced 1984), a reflection on changes in the
handling of criminality during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whose macabre
humour is reminiscent of Churchill's first professionally staged play, the dark comedy,
Owners (1973).
Like many of her generation influenced by Brecht, Churchill eschews suspenseful plotting,
favouring instead an episodic approach to storytelling. Her plays, then, tend to be
constructed from many loosely connected scenes which do not necessarily 'join up'
seamlessly with each other, but rather build up, through patterning, a general picture. In
this way, Churchill's audiences are encouraged, in Brecht's words, to have their 'eyes on
the course' and not 'on the finish'. One particularly 'Churchillian' strategy in plotting is the
juxtaposition of two radically discontinuous theatrical worlds. This technique is employed in
Cloud Nine with the clash between 1879 and 1979, as well as Top Girls, where the
extraordinary fantasy of the dinner party contrasts starkly with the ordinary world of the
workplace and the home. This 'contrapuntal' structure is also employed to varying degrees
in Traps (1978), Hotel (1997) and Far Away (2000), but perhaps most strikingly in Blue Heart
(1997). Blue Heart consists, in fact, of two short plays, 'Heart's Desire' and 'Blue Kettle'. In
the first playlet, the long-anticipated return of a daughter from Australia by her parents and
aunt is rehearsed over and over with slightly different variations and outcomes, while in the
second half, forty year-old Derek convinces a series of elderly women that he is the son
they gave up for adoption, with the complication that, as the playlet goes on, the words
'Blue' and Kettle' begin to replace the words the characters speak, just as Derek has
substituted himself for the women's real sons. The link between the two halves is at once
visual - the blue kettle which appears on stage in 'Heart's Desire' - and thematic (both
halves deal with the passion between parent and child). By not always making explicit what
connections exist between the two parts of such contrapuntal plays, Churchill opens up a
space of interrogation and uncertainty which the audience must occupy.
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'Counterpoint' is of course a term from music, and it is significant that in recent years
Churchill has turned more and more to a theatre which incorporates music and especially
dance. The exploitation of dance can be seen in Blue Heart, even though that play does not
technically speaking make use of dance. The repetition, with slight variations and at
different paces, of the same movements again and again in 'Heart's Desire' allows us to
see such supposedly mundane activities as putting on a cardigan, opening and shutting a
fridge, and setting a table as highly choreographed movements. And just as 'Heart's
Desire' demonstrates the intense work of the body internal to any stage activity, so 'Blue
Kettle', by stripping the stage of comprehensible language, shows how the theatre can in
fact, like dance, do without language.
Churchill's turn to music and dance theatre has, naturally, involved collaboration with
choreographers and composers, so that her work is becoming more and more a collective
enterprise. Among her regular collaborators are Ian Spink, on A Mouthful of Birds, Lives of
the Great Poisoners, The Skriker, and Hotel and Orlando Gough, on Lives of the Great
Posioners and Hotel. However, Churchill's involvement in collective work began much
earlier, and she is always quick to acknowledge the participation of others in the
productions and printed plays, which bear her name. Vinegar Tom emerged out of
workshops with Monstrous Regiment, the feminist theatre group which staged it, and many
of her plays are the product of collaboration with director Max Stafford-Clark and/or Joint
Stock theatre company (latterly Out of Joint): Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Cloud
Nine, Top Girls, Fen, Serious Money, A Mouthful of Birds, Ice Cream (1989), Blue Heart. In
her introduction to Vinegar Tom, Churchill generously explains how first working with
Monstrous Regiment and Joint Stock in 1976 transformed her as a playwright: 'Though I
still wanted to write alone sometimes, my attitude to myself, my work and others had been
basically and permanently changed.'
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Essay Questions
1. What are the issues presented in the following section? How does the way in
which language is used reflect the characters' ways of thinking?
Act 1 from: 'Griselda: Walter found it hard to believe I loved him...' to 'Griselda: I do
think - I do wonder - it would have been nicer if Walter hadn't had to'.
2. What do we learn about Marlene and her values in this exchange between her
and Jeanine?
Act 2 Scene 1, from Jeanine: 'I'm saving to get married?...to 'Marlene: I think you
could make me believe it if you put your mind to it'.
3. How are the problems between Angie and Joyce presented in this extract
from the play?
Act 2 Scene 2, from: 'Angie: I think I'm my aunt's child. I think my mother's really
my aunt'... to 'Angie: I put on this dress to kill my mother'.
4. Describe the values that are involved in this conversation between Win, Nell
and Marlene.
Act 2 Scene 3, from 'No, but I always want the tough ones when I see them. Hang
onto them.' to 'We'd rather it was you than Howard...'.
5. What are the tensions in this section of Top Girls?
Act 3, from 'Marlene: I left home, so what, I left home. People do leave home / it is
normal' to 'Joyce: everyone's always crying in this house. Nobody takes any
notice'.
6. What are the issues at stake between Marlene and Joyce? How is Angie's
reaction at the end of the play significant in relation to this family?
Act 3, from 'Marlene: so what's this about you and Frank?' to 'Angie: frightening'
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
English Questions
1. How does Churchill present the freedoms that women have gained in the years preceding
her play?
2. In what ways does Churchill present the problems of society and not just of gender?
3. How does Churchill present the conflicts between the women in the play? What does the
absence of male characters in the play add to this?
4. Consider the title of the play. Who do you think the ‘Top Girls’ in the play are and why?
Discuss who you think are ‘Top Girls’ today and why.
5. Compare and contrast Marlene & Joyce and discuss which of these two characters you
are most sympathetic towards and why.
6. The first two scenes take place a year after the last scene. Why do you think Caryl
Churchill chose not to present the play in chronological order? If the play were in
chronological order, how would this change your experience?
7. On writing Top Girls, Churchill has said; “My original idea was to write a play for an
enormous number of women, and I just wrote a play that had 16 women’s parts in it”.
Often for financial reasons, but also as an artistic choice, many companies have actors
doubling or playing multiple roles. Discuss how this might affect our experience when
watching the play.
8. Churchill is renowned for her use of overlapping dialogue. Aside from providing a sense of
realistic conversation, why do you think this technique is used in Top Girls and what does
it add to the play?
9. The first scene is punctuated by the regular appearance of a nameless waitress who
serves dinner. Discuss how the dinner guests view the waitress. Why did Churchill create
this character?
10. Top Girls was written at a very specific time in British history both socially and culturally.
How relevant is this play to a contemporary Australian audience.
11. Churchill that most art has political implications, but that work such as hers ‘usually only
gets noticed and called “political” if it’s against the status quo’. Discuss.
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Drama Questions
1. Explain the relevance of the glass ceiling in this production and how it was used
throughout the show.
2. Compare and contrast two of the characters in the play and
3. How does the style of the opening sequence compare to the rest of the play?
4. How would you describe Caryl Churchill’s style of writing and is Top Girls typical of this
style?
5. One of the ongoing secrets in the play is what Angie’s notebook contains. What clues do
you get and how do you imagine her notebook? Why does she keep it?
6. For the play’s initial production, a white actress portrayed Lady Nijo while other
productions have had an Asian actress play the part. Does an audience register this racial
difference? How would you cast this role and why?
7. Caryl Churchill acknowledges a general Brechtian influence in her work: ”I think for writers,
directors and actors working in England in the seventies his ideas have been absorbed
into the general pool of shared knowledge and attitudes, so what without constantly
thinking of Brecht we nevertheless imagine things in a way we might not have without
him”. What in Top Girls so you consider to be influenced by Brecht?
8. There are many important silences throughout the play, particularly in the opening scene.
Lesley Sharp who portrayed Gret in the 1991 production, concluded that “Gret’s silence
was not that she didn’t have anything to say, but that she had too much to say”. Discuss
what you think both Gret and the waitress in the first scene may really want to say.
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Design
The play shifts its setting from office, considered the traditional male sphere, to the kitchen, or the
traditional woman’s sphere. We don’t see Marlene’s domestic space or Joyce’s working space.
Why is this significant? How would you imagine these spaces to be? Draw a potential set design
for both of these spaces and describe the different environments.
Performance
Marlene and Joyce’s final scene assumes a shared history between the sisters. Considering what
we learn about their family history, parents, childhood and past relationships in this scene,
improvise an imagined scene where Joyce decided to raise Marlene’s child.
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Immediate Reactions
After viewing the play set aside time for class discussion. Consider the following aspects of the
play, and record them into your journal.
Production Elements
Performance Elements
Strengths
Impact on
Audience
Weaknesses
Impact on
Audience
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Design Roles
For each of the following design roles, explain using three specific examples, how each role
added meaning to the action or your understanding of context, theme or other aesthetic
understandings of the drama event.
Design Role
Technique
What did this contribute to the performance?
One
Two
Lighting
Three
One
Two
Set Design
Three
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012
Further Resources
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Tycer, Alicia. Modern Theatre Guides: Caryl Churchill Top Girls. Continuum, 2008.
Churchill, Caryl. Top Girls. Methuen drama 2008
Rabillard, Sheila. Essays on Caryl Churchill: Contemporary Representations. Blizzard
publishing, 1997
Bazzin Victoria. "[Not] talking 'bout my generation": historicizing feminisms in Caryl
Churchill's Top Girls.: An article from: Studies in the Literary Imagination. Thompson Gale,
2008
Fitzsimmons, Linda /Trussler, Simon. File On Churchill (Plays and Playwrights). Methuen
Drama, 1989
Useful Links
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www.guardian.co.uk/stage/carylchurchill
www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/timelines/british/index_embed.shtml
www.louderthanwar.com/top-13-anti-margaret-thatcher-songs/
References
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Tycer, Alicia. Modern Theatre Guides: Caryl Churchill Top Girls. Continuum, 2008.
Churchill, Caryl. Top Girls. Methuen drama 2008
Guthrie Theatre. Study Guide – Top Girls. 2003
www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/timelines/british/index_embed.shtml
www.public.wsu.edu/~cmaier/TopGirls/page2.htm
www.s-cool.co.uk/a-level/english-literature/top-girls/revise-it/areas-of-study
www.gradesaver.com/top-girls/wikipedia/style/
*Web links were active when preparing this guide
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Study Guide: Top Girls
by Alison Howard
© 2012