Top Girls
The Sydney Theatre Company
Written by Caryl Churchill
Directed by Melissa Bruce
At the Wharf Theatre, Sydney, until May 29
Reviewed by Karen Fredericks
"Top Girls came out of the climate of having a right-wing woman prime minister [Margaret Thatcher] and was pushed on ... by a visit to America about three years ago where I met several women who were talking about how great it was that women were getting on so well now in American corporations, that there were equal opportunities. And although that's certainly part of feminism, it's not what I think is enough. I'm saying there's no such thing as right-wing feminism."
So says socialist feminist playwright Caryl Churchill in the program notes for the Sydney Theatre Company's current production of her intensely political and still timely play, Top Girls.
Churchill wrote the play in England in the early 1980s, and, although it is of that time and place, it has resonance in the Australia of the 1990s, for we too have had our share of right-wing women in positions of political power, and they have not all been from the traditionally conservative side of politics.
Perhaps the play is somewhat more complex in a contemporary Australian setting, for while Churchill's top girl, Marlene, is avowedly right wing, our own home-grown top girls are likely to profess at least Social Democratic leanings. They are not, however, any more "feminist" for that.
At least two audience members at the performance I attended were disappointed in the play. "I thought it was going to be about successful women", said one visibly successful woman to another as we streamed from the theatre, "but it was all rather sad really, wasn't it?"
Yes, the play is sad, but it depicts a sad reality — while it may be possible for women such as Margaret Thatcher, Joan Kirner and a certain number of sisters in suits to obtain both money and power, the majority of women remain economically and politically powerless, a constant reminder to the top girls of where they came from and where, unless they stay even more cunning and rapacious than the ruling-class men with whom they work, they may return.
Churchill's script has enormous depth. Her characters are sharply and purposefully drawn, and her manipulation of time is fascinating. The STC has done a good job with cast, costume and stage design, especially in the opening scene, in which Marlene dines with a weird and wonderful collection of top girls from history. I particularly enjoyed the performance of Deborah Kennedy as Pope Joan.
Linda Cropper, as Marlene, makes a very convincing top girl, and Kerry Walker, as her working-class sister, communicates strength, sadness, anger and exasperation, bringing the role to life in a very recognisable way. It is through her character that Churchill's voice although she does not give answers.
"I quite deliberately left a hole in the play", says Churchill in the program notes, "rather than giving people a model of what they could be like. I meant the thing that is absent to have a presence in the play ... I thought, what the hell; if people can't see the values, I don't want to spell them out." For the socialists in the audience it will not be difficult to fill the spaces.