Top Girls has relocated to Liverpool, and Caryl Churchill, who was consulted about the production and its new context, has recently said that her 1982 classic, based on Thatcher’s Britain, is more an inquiry into society than about feminism. Director Suba Das’s enthusiastic production might have the Toxteth riots as background but it reminds one that the brilliance of Churchill’s play is that it is never doctrinaire, but filled with human oddity, struggle and disappointment. Tala Gouveia power-walks her way convincingly into the role of Marlene, managing director of Top Girls Recruitment Agency, and yet – her 80s shoulder-padded dress notwithstanding – she proves as much a casualty, in her own way, as women with low-flying careers or no careers at all.
In Top Girls, sisterhood scarcely exists – even between sisters. Marlene’s illegitimate daughter, Angie (engaging Saffron Dey), is being raised by Marlene’s working-class sister Joyce (Alicya Eyo powerfully emphasises Joyce’s righteous resentment). Aside from Angie’s spaniel-like devotion to “Auntie”, none of the women likes one another, and that is the real shocker (especially in the Liverpudlian context). Individual ambition contributes nothing to the common good. And this turns out to be the challenge for the production itself because the spirit of “each woman for herself” is, at the moment, leading to a lack of cohesion in the cast.
