Top Girls by Caryl Churchill
Barons Court Theatre, December 2000

Let me make an immediate, upfront confession: I am not mad about the play. In my theatrical Top Ten, Top Girls falls right off the bottom. I agree entirely with its sentiments, but don’t like their treatment. Nevertheless, and to make matters worse, for some perverse personal reason, I actually produced Caryl Churchill’s satirical ball-breaking diatribe myself only 16 months ago. Thus, before Marlene ordered her first Frascati, this production faced both prejudices and pre-conceptions. A second confession: I am delighted to say that director Nadine Hoare and her talented cast largely overcame all prejudgement with humour, energy and aplomb.

The plot is simple and straightforward, and gives precedence to the underlying themes. It centres upon self-centred Marlene. We first see her celebrating the ascent of her own particular greasy pole (the managing directorship of the ‘Top Girls’ recruitment agency) in the company of a surrealistic group of diverse historical divas: from a 13th-century Japanese courtesan to a Victorian lady traveller via the only female Pope. Later we see her in the more naturalistic settings of office and family home, as she faces the equally natural threats of everyday stress, guilt and jealousy visited upon her by colleagues, clients and, most threatening of all, the sister and daughter she ruthlessly deserted.

Upon this skeleton of a plot, Churchill drapes her themes. The outer layer quite blatantly states that this is the 1980s: the era when greed was good, society was no longer a concept or a concern, and selfishness reigned supreme. This is Thatcher’s Britain. Maggie’s name is hardly mentioned, but it is stamped through this play like the word ‘Blackpool’ (the scene of so many of the Iron Lady’s most metallic moments) through a stick of rock. Perhaps that is why, as we mark the end of a Thatcher-free decade, I find this 18-year-old play as dated as shoulder pads and red braces.

That said, I still wear them both on the (very) odd occasion myself (though not always simultaneously). Similarly, although a teary-eyed Thatcher stepped long ago into the departing Daimler, the values she espoused still haunt the British psyche. Perhaps that is why the play retains its considerable resonance and emotional power. Perhaps, however, it does so because of the less obvious, more resilient themes that surface most strongly in the backyard and kitchen of Marlene’s downtrodden, embittered sister Joyce. Undoubtedly that is why this production succeeded in crossing both the footlights and the years: those East Anglian scenes of sibling rivalry, doubt and the clamber for self-esteem could have been set, to paraphrase Bogart, in any county in any country in any century. Nadine’s bold production demonstrated that these emotional threads link all ages, and so made a cynic-tight case for Churchill’s inclusion of that first, otherwise bemusing, dinner scene.

Here this engorged prologue was very funny. Perhaps too funny. The laughs were played for all they were worth, and most hit the spot. I only wish the more revealing lines had given both actors and audience a little more breathing space and time for consideration. In this, no cast is helped by Churchill’s use of dictatorially-notated, over-lapping speech. Having realised that this was a ground-breaking theatrical technique, I fear that Churchill regrettably got rather reckless with her dialogue digger. However, in this production, the confusion canyon was deepened by rather too much focus-pulling biz amid the bread baskets and brandies. Thus too much of the characters’ undoubtedly touching third dimensions, and the entire scene’s subtlety, remained hidden and unheard. In this, Lorraine Furneaux’s nicely no-nonsense Isabella Bird and Cathy Burnell’s refreshingly down-to-earth Pope Joan were unfortunately the most sinned against.

That said, no other interpretation I have seen has so clearly underlined the innate selfish of all the dinner guests, and not merely Marlene: all in their own vacuum-packed worlds and happy to be so, not one really interested in anything that anyone else has to say. For once I understood why Marlene had invited them, and why they had accepted. Moreover, Morag Galloway’s carnal kleptomaniac Dull Gret succeeded in being both funny and effective, and the scene enabled Tracey Pocock’s Marlene to get her feet firmly under the table, theatrically as well as literally.

Mutton dressed as lamb, appropriately in mint green, this Marlene was a Lady Bracknell for our age, determined to have both her handbag and eat it, were “disgusting” profiteroles not also on offer. This was a gloriously grotesque comic creation, played with gusto: her dress sense as dubious as her ethics, she combined the nasal, down-inflecting yet upwardly mobile tone of Alison Steadman at her most Estuary, the chandelier-like earrings of Pat Butcher, and the insincerity and heartlessness of Anne Robinson. “Didn’t you think of getting rid of it?” she tellingly asks Joan when she hears of her politically-awkward pregnancy. Later, she even dismisses Mrs Kidd in true “you are the weakest link” fashion…

All of these First Act ladies remained, to a greater or lesser extent, two dimensional. However, Marlene remained so throughout the entire play. This I felt was rather unfortunate. Perhaps, bearing in mind the Spitting Image Thatcher, this was also intentional. However, I doubt that this was Churchill’s intention. Marlene is not Maggie. On the plus side, Tracey’s Marlene deliberately eschewed the obvious Thatcher impersonation. Indeed, she was so vulgar and so unfeeling, she made Mrs T look like a human being by comparison. On the down side, I feel that this production could truly have hit the nerve if Marlene had revealed, if only in the last scene, something of the real self brutally buried beneath the carefully cultivated carelessness.

In the Shoulder-pad City that is Act Two, Marlene met her worst nightmare: a Frankenstein’s monster even more self-obsessed and self-deluding than herself. Having patiently played Griselda in the first scene, Marsha Rose blossomed as Nell. The Shirley Porter to Marlene’s Thatcher, in true Westminster-style, she stole every scene in which she appeared. In this, she was aided and abetted by Mala Wardell’s preoccupied Win: a modern day Nijo, her masochism a little more mundane but no less marked, she gave the term ‘New Romantic’ a completely new, somewhat sinister, meaning.

The three interview scenes provide lovely vignettes for the supporting cast, and, the East Anglian scenes aside, show Churchill at her most sharply observant. Along with the surrounding office scenes, they also most obviously mark Top Girls as already a period piece, concerned as they are with an age before women in top jobs were commonplace and when shorthand typing was the staple requirement for any girl embarking upon a career. Cathy Burnell expertly stepped out of her papal robes to become sweet, easily steam-rollered Jeanine, whilst Nicole Blyth was a revelation as frizzy-haired, slack-jawed Shona, her chewing gum clicking away like a metronome. This was the first production where, undoubtedly quite rightly, I never believed her sales patter for an instant. If Nicole is ever in need of an audition piece to display her considerable talent, she could do far worse than choose that final foot-on-the-gas-pedal speech.

The agency scenes provided the opportunity for two further cameos: Risa Klegerman as clearly certifiable Louise and Frances Redmond as Mrs Kidd. The latter was an impressive observation of mealy-mouthed middle-class respectability and mackintoshed repression. Frances’s portrayal was funny and spot-on, mainly due to the fact that it was wisely underplayed. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Risa whose Louise was a little too twitchy, wide-eyed and reminiscent of Herbert Lom’s Chief Inspector Dreyfuss. Yes, it was a funny turn but, because it was so clearly played for laughs, not as truly comic as it could have been, and certainly not as poignant or insightful. This perhaps is my one major regret as regards the entire production: in reaching for the humorous heights, it sometimes failed to plumb all the depths. In this instance, however, one cannot blame either Frances or Risa for squeezing as much out of such small roles as they could. Given the inclusive nature of KDC, it was understandable that Nadine wished to increase the original cast size, but somewhat unfortunate that, in doing so, the dramatic meat was not more evenly distributed.

Those luckily left with the lion’s share certainly devoured it hungrily. Morag Galloway’s wide-eyed, knock-kneed, Denis-the-Menace-glass-toting Angie established excellent rapport with both the audience and Nicole Blyth’s quieter, shrewder, chocolate biscuit-loving Kit. Their perfectly judged, physically constrained scene in the shelter was a joy: funny, sad, sharp and true. Morag’s development of Angie through the later scenes was also well-observed, particularly her brighter, on-best-behaviour aspect when in London, hair gripped back to appear older. Her eyes wide with awe and wonder as Marlene sends Mrs Kidd packing, they changed in an instant to the colour of her scarlet puffer jacket at the thought of being despatched home herself. Her wild emotions and fragile dreams were portrayed with painful honesty, making her final rejection by both real mother and real world quite agonising. I doubt that her throwaway line in the final scene, “we all smell the same”, has ever been tinged with such pathos.

It is also a great credit to Nadine that I had never before noticed the key importance of the word “blood” and the many meanings wrung out of it throughout the play, climaxing in the final confrontational scene between Marlene and Joyce. Top Girls starts with a celebration and ends in recrimination: another drunken evening as the sisters stake out the impassable boundaries separating their very different lives. Between them is Angie, her purple party dress strikingly at odds with the bleached world, jeans and face of Lorraine Furneaux’s heart-rendingly wry and desiccated Joyce. Equally alien is Angie’s need for compassion and support to the Marlene whose eyes, at the terrifying thought of taking her “shite seeing” to the Tower of London, had earlier flown skywards like deserting crows.

Regrettably, as with the earlier scenes, the denouement seemed too often to choose the easy option of getting a laugh, skimming the surface rather than mining the richer, darker seams. Somehow I don’t think that Marlene’s “I don’t mean anything personal” is really a comic line, or, if it is, it is surely one sodden with sadness. Thus the entire scene seemed somewhat subdued: a bit of a tiff rather than two sisters blindly hacking off their one rope-bridge back to reconciliation. This was more Margo and Barbara from The Good Life, with a touch of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, than the “uncomfortable process of these women getting in touch with first their grief and then their anger”, as promised in the programme note.

That is not to say that the scene wasn’t enjoyable nor that it didn’t pack a few surprises. In particular, I thought the deliberately evoked parallel with Angie and Kit’s earlier squabble was a brilliant touch: the huffs, puffs, crossed arms and final, plaintive “love you really” starkly underlining the sense that nothing ever changes… really. The scene was also admirably paced for the most part, although occasionally pace was confused with speed. This was a tendency throughout the show, but was most discernible at the close: Joyce’s exit and Angie’s re-emergence and final line all seemed a little rushed if arguably all the more realistic.

The primarily riveting roller-coaster pace was greatly aided by slick stage management from Jasmine Macnabb and Mark Mayhem, with the set commendably naturalistic given the necessities of the play and the constraints of the venue. Jim Calderwood and Emily Orsbourne’s highly evocative soundtrack featuring The Jam, Wham, Madness, et al, and the excellent costumes by the multi-talented Cathy Burnell further added to the overwhelming sense of professionalism and period.

This was an enormously admirable production of a difficult and challenging play: one that succeeded in questioning, in the modern world, where women can have it all, who has really won and what they have lost. Here, Top Girls truly equalled top drama.

Daniel Wain