Top Girl by Caryl Churchill

Top Girl is a three-act play written by Carly Churchill during the '80s.

In the first act there is a dinner party celebrating Marlene's job promotion to managing director. However the guests were fictitious females from the past, likely famous or notorious during their times, having accomplished something unconventional.  They include Isabella Bird from the 19th century who had travelled extensively, Lady Nijo from the 13th century who was an Emperor's courtesan and later a Buddhist nun, Dull Gret, the subject of the Brueghel painting, Dulle Griet, in which a woman in an apron and armour led a crowd of women charging through hell, Pope Joan, who disguised as a man and was briefly a Pope, and Patient Griselda, the obedient wife whose story is told by Chaucer in 'The Clerk's Tale' of The Canterbury Tales. Only Marlene is a person from the present time. There was nothing in the text explaining whether the other figures were ghosts or were risen from the dead. A silent waiter served them food. 

The women recounted their experience. They talked usually about their husbands and families, but Marlene was silent about hers. The women's lives were generally centered on their husbands or lovers. As we moved into the second act, we saw the sharp contrast between how women today had a job or career while women in the past did not.

In the second act, first scene, female job-seekers visited the employment agency run by Marlene in London. Through the interviews conducted by Win and Nell with the job-seekers, we saw the optimistic aspirations of the applicants for their careers. In the second scene of the second act, twelve-year-old Kitty and sixteen-year-old Angie were having their girl talk in Angie's home. Angie's mother, Joyce, forbade her to go to the movie with Kitty until she had cleaned up her room. Angie refused, and got dressed up for the movie. Angie had shared with Kitty that she might visit her aunt Marlene in London.  In Act Two, Scene Three, Angie showed up at Marlene's agency unannounced, and asked to spend the night with Marlene. She admitted to Marlene that Joyce was unaware that she had come to London.

In Act Three, the scene moved to Joyce's home. The time was a year before Scene Two. Marlene visited Joyce after an absence of six years. There were tension between them as they defended their choice of lives. Joyce took up a few cleaning jobs to support the family. Marlene essentially believed that one should work hard, fought every opportunity, and get on with moving ahead. Joyce however explained that options were unavailable to her, and remarked that Marlene could not have known how others lived their lives when Marlene did not come home regularly to visit her parents, her sister and her niece. Marlene felt that she was unwelcome when she had made the effort to come by. They also disagreed on what and how the prevailing social classes and middle classes should do in their social and economic pursuits. We realised that Angie was really Marlene's child, brought up by Joyce when Marlene left home to pursue her dreams.

Top Girls could stand without the first act with the dinner party.  This act could emphasize that Marlene, in her pursuit of her career, did not even have a close circle of friends in her life. rom the third act, we see that Marlene gave up her daughter and left her with Joyce as Joyce had offered to look after Angie. Marlene was not fighting to have Angie back in her life.  Marlene and Joyce are sharp contrast in that the former was willing to pay the price with estrangement from her family to pursue her freedom, while the latter sacrificed her freedom to care for her aged parents and young child. The juxtaposition of females' way of lives in modern societies with past lives in more patriarchal societies brings out that one had to make a choice of what one wants, and be ready to compromise and forfeit other important things for that one thing to get to the top.  But with so much desires, no one could feel fulfillment even after reaching the top.

The play text comes with a page that explains the notation used for the point of interruption, and the point of continuation. I appreciate the care given in planning how the dialogue and lines intercut. At the dinner party with a group of women busy talking, the continuation indicator helps to reduce confusion on who is 'following' or responding to who.