How wonderful to see the stage of a West End play filled entirely by women. How sobering though that, 29 years after its Royal Court debut, this feisty feminist polemic from Caryl Churchill should still elicit such an opening comment in a review.
Churchill's theatrically audacious, unmistakably heartfelt drama takes the pulse of the sisterhood in the age of Thatcher and is forced to conclude that some sisters are considerably more equal than others. Tory prime ministers may change, this luxuriously cast revival transferring in from Chichester seems to say, but other things stay grimly the same.
Marlene (Suranne Jones) has just been appointed MD of the Top Girls employment agency and to celebrate has thrown the dinner party of one's intellectual dreams.
Her guests, all notable women from history, include Victorian explorer Isabella Bird, the 13th-century courtesan of a Japanese emperor and Pope Joan, thought to have held the papacy disguised as a man in the ninth century. These women had a lot, but they didn't have it all, particularly in the sphere of family life.
So where have the centuries left us? Churchill doesn't hesitate: in the gap between the go-getting haves and the left-behind have-nots of early Eighties Britain. Acts Two and Three pull us, in both location and sympathy, between Marlene's slick office, all big hair and power-dressing, and the rural home of her estranged sister Joyce (Stella Gonet), struggling with her educationally backward teenage daughter Angie (Olivia Poulet).
Fine work from all seven actresses keeps our emotions on the spin and director Max Stafford-Clark offers a nuanced but fleet-footed production.
Lucy Briers makes a deliciously straight-talking pontiff and Poulet transforms from a comically monosyllabic dinner guest into the sort of girl history is likely to forget. Top stuff.
Until October 29: (0844 871 7632; topgirlstheplay.com).
Top Girls
Trafalgar Studios
Whitehall, SW1A 2DY
