Top Girls Tickets

Trafalgar Studios plays host to Caryl Churchill's acclaimed 1982 play 'Top Girls', running from the 5^th of August to the 15^th of October 2011. This all-female production reunites Churchill's powerful and insightful writing with director Max Stafford-Clark, who directed the world premiere run of the play at the Royal Court almost thirty years ago. It is produced by Sonia Friedman, Stafford-Clark's partner in the Out of Joint theatre company. The play boldly tackles issues of power and feminism head-on, in the tense atmosphere of Britain under Margaret Thatcher's rule.

The play focuses on the actions of Marlene, a hardened career woman, who is driven to pursue great personal achievement by her feminist and individualist beliefs. Marlene is throwing a dinner party in honour of her most recent promotion, having been made Managing Director of the employment agency where she works, the titular Top Girls. Her dinner guests are all strong female figures from history and myth, including Pope Joan, the explorer Isabella Bird, and 'Dull Gret', the subject of a 16^th century painting by Pieter Breughel. The women discuss in depth both what they have achieved, and what they have left behind in order to achieve, including their children and loving relationships. After their evening culminates in the masculine ritual of after-dinner brandy, the action moves to Marlene's work at Top Girls, and introduces Angie, a teenage girl who we are led to believe is Marlene's niece. Angie is an awkward and naïve girl, whose inexperience and lack of confidence grates against Marlene's brash self-assuredness. Marlene's sister Joyce arrives, and together with Angie, the ladies discuss their past and their complex family relationships into the night – but has Angie's relentless focus on individual success forced her apart from the true goals of love and equality, and from her closest relatives?

In 'Top Girls', Caryl Churchill, one of Britain's most treasured 20^th century playwrights, expertly utilises an all-female cast to explore feminist issues which remain as topical today as they were at the play's premiere. She manages to advocate social equality and understanding for women, and at the same time to critique the alienating individualism espoused by Margaret Thatcher and American feminist thought during the 1980s. Max Stafford-Clark has been widely praised in the national press for this rejuvenation of one of his earliest successes. Marlene is played by Suranne Jones, well-known from ITV's 'Scott and Bailey' and 'Coronation Street'.