FRom the pRL / originally written in English / C20TH / Europe / England

“A work of genius that will never date”

Paul Taylor, writing in the Telegraph, 2017

Introduction

Since premiering in 1982 at the Royal Court Theatre London, and its successful Atlantic crossing to New York later that year, Top Girls has been regarded as a seminal play about the difficulties faced by women in the world of work and society at large. Mixing fantasy and reality, using a nonlinear construction, and featuring overlapping dialogue as women speak across, on top of, and around one another, Top Girls is both unique and difficult. Beginning with a surreal, imaginary dinner party scene that celebrates the promotion of Marlene to managing director of Top Girls Employment Agency, Churchill asks questions about what it takes for a woman to be successful, and to what extent 20th century Feminism has equaled out historical injustices for women.

Admired by critics for the daring way it handles big ideas in singular fashion, Top Girls is the play that solidified Caryl Churchill’s reputation. Featuring an all-woman cast, the play is still regularly performed around the world and is part of the canon of women’s theatre. It won the Obie Award in 1983 and was runner-up for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Alongside Cloud Nine, which also won an Obie, Top Girls is an outstanding achievement and caps a fine writing career. Churchill began exploring feminist ideas with her first play for the Royal Court, Objections to Sex and Violence in 1974. She continued to explore feminism with Vinegar Tom (1976) that was written both with the help of and for Monstrous Regiment, a feminist touring-theater company. These plays garnered Churchill more attention and critical praise until, in 1979, Churchill’s Cloud Nine had its first production. This play, her first big hit, is set in the Victorian era, with the male and female roles played by their physical opposites. Critics enthusiastically praised Churchill’s originality and she followed this success with Top Girls in 1982, a play about feminism and the price of success for women.

IB Student Learner Profile: Carer

IB Lang and Lit Concept: Identity

In the final scene of the play, Marlene aligns herself with Thatcherism and, for those who know the ‘Iron Lady’ it’s hard to ignore the aspects of Margaret Thatcher’s identity revealed in Marlene’s character. Like Thatcher, Marlene left her humble roots behind, hiding her origins behind an affected accent and style of dress. Like Thatcher, Marlene isn’t interested in being seen as a woman, preferring other people not consider her womanhood at all. And, like Thatcher, Marlene is devoutly capitalist; her disdain for the poor is revealed by her self-aggrandising comments in the final scene.

Act 1 Scene 1

“Oh God, why are we all so miserable?”

Marlene

Top Girls opens in a swanky London restaurant where Marlene is hosting a dinner party to celebrate her recent promotion at work. But this is no ordinary dinner: Marlene’s guests are all women who are either long-dead or are fictional characters from literature or paintings. The first to come are Isabella Bird and Lady Nijo who discuss their lives, including their families. Dull Gret and Pope Joan, who was elected to the papacy in the ninth century, appear. The conversation wanders between subjects, including religion and the love lives of Nijo and Isabella. Isabella goes on about her travel experiences. Joan relates a disturbing story about her affair with a chamberlain, resulting in a pregnancy. In denial about her state, she gave birth to her child during a papal procession and was stoned to death. While Joan relates her story, Nijo talks about her four children being born, and only being able to see one of them after having given birth. Isabella talks about how she never had children. Marlene is just wondering why they are all so miserable when the final guest arrives; Patient Griselda, a character in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Though she was a peasant girl, she was asked to be the wife of a local prince, but only if she obeyed him without question.

Learner Portfolio: Women’s Stories Across History

The play begins at a metaphysical dinner table around which sit women from all walks of life, social stations, periods in history, and backgrounds. Above all, this scene reveals how the sharing of women’s stories is one of the playwright’s primary intentions. As Marlene’s guests, both historical and fictional, tell tales of their lives, the audience can’t help but hear echoes of shared pain, and eerie, overlapping experiences. Through these ‘co-incidences’, Churchill showcases common stories that have been untold, unheard, or misrepresented across history.

Write a piece for your Learner Portfolio in which you examine the similar themes of two or three of the women’s stories from Act One Scene One. What ‘truths’ about women’s shared experiences throughout time does Churchill reveal through these overlapping stories?

Act 1 Scene 2

“So you won’t tell them you’re getting married?”

Marlene

The action relocates to the Top Girls Employment Agency in London. Marlene is interviewing Jeanine for possible placement by the agency. According to Marlene, if Jeanine wants a job with ‘prospects’ she must not tell her future employers that she is getting married or might have children. As the evaluation continues, Marlene’s perception of Jeanine’s chances seem less and less assured.

Learner Portfolio: Practise for Paper 1 (Literature students only)

If you are a Language A: Literature student, at the end of your course you will sit Paper 1: Guided Literary Analysis. This paper contains two previously unseen literary passages. SL students write a guided analysis of one of these passages; HL students write about both passages. The passages could be taken from any of four literary forms: prose, poetry, drama or literary non-fiction. Each of the passages will be from a different literary form.

Here are two passages taken from Top Girls; as this is a play the literary form is ‘drama’. Each passage is accompanied by a guiding question to provide a focus or ‘way in’ to your response. Choose one passage and complete this Learner Portfolio entry in the style of Paper 1: Guided Literary Analysis.

Act 1 Scene 3

“If your face fits at school it’s going to fit other places too. It wouldn’t make no difference to Angie.”

Joyce

Once again the action relocates, this time to Joyce’s backyard in Suffolk. Joyce is Marlene’s older sister and her sixteen year-old daughter, Angie, is playing with her best friend Kit in a shelter they have built. Joyce calls for Angie to come in for dinner, but the girls ignore her until she gives up and goes back in. Angie and Kit want to go to the movies, and they get cross with each other when Angie keeps changing the topic: she talks about hearing dead kittens, moving pictures with the power of her mind, and why she’s not afraid of a nuclear war. It turns out Angie is hiding a secret – she believes her aunt is really her mother and she’s planning to run away to London to find her.

Learner Portfolio: Be the Top Girls’ Casting Director

While Top Girls has an impressive cast of characters, most productions of the play use a small cast of actors who play more than one role. For example, the actor who plays Isabella Bird in the first scene plays Joyce in the third scene (and sometimes Mrs Kidd in Act 2 Scene 1 for good measure). Think about the reasons Churchill might have for creating a play where more than one character can be played by the same cast member. You might think this could be confusing, but above all, this choice helps the audience realise how women’s historical struggles against social patriarchies are still being played out in the modern world.

Create a piece of work where you consider the parallels between the historical/fictional characters from Act 1 Scene 1 and the modern characters from the rest of the play. Which roles would you have the same actor play and why? Read this sample for Isabella / Joyce, then choose one or more pairs of characters to cast from this list:

Act 2 Scene 1

“Howard thinks because he’s a fella the job was his as of right. Our Marlene’s got far more balls and that’s that.”

Nell

Back in the Top Girls Agency it’s Monday morning and Win and Nell are talking about the weekend. Win spent the night at her boyfriend’s house – except he’s a married man and his wife was out of town. They gossip about Marlene’s promotion and what this might mean for them and Howard, a male co-worker who went for Marlene’s job but didn’t get it. Later, the two will interview other women who have applied to the agency for repositioning.

In the main office, Angie brazenly walks in. Like she promised Kit, she’s come to London to see her aunt and intends to stay… indefinitely! Marlene questions her to try to find out her real intentions, and Angie gets upset that her aunt doesn’t seem as thrilled to see her as she had hoped. Their reunion is interrupted by the arrival of Mrs Kidd, Howard’s wife. She wants Marlene to turn down her promotion so her husband can have the job! You can probably imagine what Marlene has to say to that proposal, and Mrs Kidd leaves in something of a huff.

Learner Portfolio: Practise for Paper 2

Write this Learner Portfolio in the style of a practice Paper 2 response. You can use one of the prompts below, or another prompt given to you by your teacher. Although Paper 2 requires you to write about two literary works, for the sake of this exercise you could focus only on your response to Top Girls, or you could try to compare your ideas to another literary work you have studied (visit this post for more help with Paper 2).

Choose one of the following prompts (or use another prompt you have been given), talk with your teacher about how to approach and structure your writing, then complete your portfolio entry:

• How have works you have studied pursued overt political aims, and to what larger effect?
• To what extent do male and female literary characters accurately reflect the roles of men and women in society?
• Explore how works of literature you have studied define and present ‘success’.
• In what ways do works of literature you have studied (in form and/or content) subvert norms, conventions, or traditions?

Act 2 Scene 2

“I think I’m going up up up.”

Marlene

The final scene of the play takes place a year earlier. The setting is Joyce’s kitchen and Marlene is visiting. She’s brought gifts for Joyce and Angie and, when Angie unwraps hers, we see it is the dress she wore in Act 1 (but of course, now it fits perfectly). While Angie tries on the dress, Marlene discovers that it was her, not Joyce, who invited her to visit. In fact, this is the first time Marlene come to see her since Angie was nine years old.

After Angie goes to bed, the two sisters discuss their lives and the conversation turns more and more heated. Marlene accuses Joyce of being jealous of her success and Joyce criticises the decisions Marlene has made, including leaving home and giving up her child. As the play draws to an end, it is clear that the sisters have very different views about the world, politics, and what the future can bring.

Learner Portfolio: Marlene and Margaret Thatcher

Although the play only makes brief reference to Margaret Thatcher in the final scene, the ethos of Thatcherism is prevalent. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister and she remained in office until 1990, when she resigned. As the first female Prime Minister in Britain (and the first in Europe at that time) Thatcher’s election seemed like a victory for feminism. But Thatcher was a right-wing conservative, and her policies and beliefs resulted in a conspicuous a lack of support for women or other vulnerable populations. For example, in all her time in office, Thatcher never promoted another woman in to her cabinet. In a 1984 interview, Churchill admits Thatcher as the impetus for writing Top Girls, saying: “[she] may be a woman, but she isn’t a sister, she may be a sister but she isn’t a comrade.”

Write a mini-essay (or create a character profile) in which you explain how Marlene can be interpreted as an avatar of Margaret Thatcher. You might like to write about one or more of these ideas, as well as any others that seem appropriate to you:

Towards Assessment: Individual Oral

Supported by an extract from one non-literary text and one from a literary work (or two literary works if you are following the Literature-only course), students will offer a prepared response of 10 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions by the teacher, to the following prompt: Examine the ways in which the global issue of your choice is presented through the content and form of two of the texts that you have studied (40 marks).

Top Girls is a play crammed full of possibilities for the Global Issue that must form the core of your Individual Oral talk. Whether you’re interested in themes of women in the workplace, female allyship, how capitalism encourages competition, the importance of sharing stories, and more aspects of Feminism, I’m sure you can find something that can be worked up into a Global Issue. Now you have finished reading and studying the play, spend a lesson working with the IB Fields of Inquiry: mind-map the play, include your ideas for Global Issues, make connections with other Literary Works or Body of Works that you have studied on your course and see if you can make a proposal you might use to write your Individual Oral.

Here are one or two suggestions to get you started, but consider your own programme of study before you make any firm decisions about your personal Global Issue. Whatever you choose, remember a Global Issue must have local relevance, wide impact and be trans-national:

Towards Assessment: Higher Level Essay

Students submit an essay on one non-literary text or a collection of non-literary texts by one same author, or a literary text or work studied during the course. The essay must be 1,200-1,500 words in length. (20 Marks).

Now you have studied the entirety of Top Girls, if you are a Higher Level student, you might like to turn your thoughts to the essay that all Higher Level students must write. Top Girls would be a very good choice of text on which to write your HL essay. Begin by considering one of these angles of approach; although remember to follow your own ideas and interests where you can:

• What ideas about women in society are suggested through items of costume and dialogue about clothing in Top Girls by Caryl Churchill?
• How does Caryl Churchill use non-chronological structure and juxtaposition to effect the audience’s experience of Top Girls?
• What is the importance of Kit and Angie to the themes and concerns of Top Girls by Caryl Churchill?
• In what ways is double-casting crucial to the success of Caryl Churchill’s play Top Girls?
• How does Churchill’s presentation of character and dialogue reveal her concerns about certain feminine issues (such as female allyship)?