By Caryl
Churchill, Melbourne Theatre Company
Sumner
Theatre, MTC, Aug 30 to Sept 29, 2012
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ***1/2
Caryl Churchill’s Top
Girls was first staged in 1982, but its central issues of women’s battles for
success, or even equality in employment, are frighteningly current.
Jenny Kemp’s production
is both playful and moving, and boasts a versatile, compelling cast of seven
women playing multiple roles.
When Churchill wrote the
play, Maggie Thatcher was in power and British feminists were fighting for
rights for the community of women, rather than simply for the individual.
Set in the early 1980s, the
play opens with Marlene (Anita Hegh) celebrating her promotion to Managing
Director of Top Girls Employment Agency.
Her dinner guests are
iconic women from history, and each of this parade of quirky characters depicts
a different aspect of women’s struggle with power or powerlessness, oppression
by men or avoidance of their control.
The latter scenes are
more poignant, when Marlene’s poor background and her relationship with her
working class sister, Joyce (Maria Theodorakis), and her daughter, Angie (Eryn
Jean Norvill) is revealed when Angie visits Marlene’s office and Marlene
returns to their family home.
Although the staging is
complex and the structure and mixed styles of the script peculiar, the
passionate performances provide its heart.
Hegh is suitably driven
and abrasive as Marlene, Theodorakis is sympathetic as bolshy, resentful Joyce
and Norvill glows as unpredictable, disturbed and simple Angie.
Margaret Mills’ Isabella
Bird is stroppy and fearsome, Sarah Ogden’s Dull Gret is hilariously
monosyllabic, Nikki Shiels is luminous as Patient Griselda and as a sassy
office gal, and Li-Leng Au is
otherworldly as ancient Japanese concubine, Lady Nijo.
Despite its odd mix of
styles and the didactic, socio-political dialogue preaching uncomfortably
sometimes, the play remains strangely topical after three decades.
By Kate Herbert
No comments:
Post a Comment