Top Girls

British playwright Caryl Churchill’s groundbreaking play Top Girls, which opened in 1982 both at the Royal Court Theatre in London (August) and Off-Broadway at the Public Theatre in New York (December), is Churchill’s second internationally acclaimed play after Cloud Nine (1979). It won the 1983 Obie Award for Best Play of the Year, and it remains one of Churchill’s best-known and most widely produced plays, often anthologized as a canonical contemporary play. Top Girls was a significant work that established Churchill as one of the most important playwrights of the late 20th century. In the decades since, Churchill has written over thirty plays. In 2010, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Top Girls was inspired by the 1979 election of right-wing conservative Margaret Thatcher as the first female Prime Minister of the UK. Although the play largely eschews direct discussion of government or politics, it challenges those who saw the election as a feminist victory by considering the way Thatcher’s conservative capitalist policies supported wealthy career woman like Marlene, the play’s protagonist, at the expense of less privileged women. It asks what women are expected to give up in order to achieve career success, ultimately suggesting that the vaunted gains in women’s equality in the postwar era may be illusory. Churchill’s postmodern, semi-surrealist, experimental structure in Top Girls created new theatrical conventions in terms of dialogue, non-linearity, and feminist historiography onstage that have become mainstays in British playwrighting.

Note: In the original production, the cast was made up of six actors, and five of them were double- or triple-cast. Although the script does not state that this casting is mandatory, and a director might opt to do otherwise, there are patterns and similarities in the traits of the characters that are played by the same actor. Most major productions have used the same casting scheme.

This guide uses the student edition of Top Girls published by Methuen Drama in 1991. The original production presented the play in two acts rather than the three seen here, and some published versions of the play use that structure. However, in this edition, Churchill includes a production note explaining that she finds the three-act version to be much clearer structurally.  

Content Warning: This guide includes discussion of rape of girls and women, child brides, sex, childbirth, miscarriage, abortion, babies dying or being killed, taking children from their mothers, adoption, dead kittens, murder, and blood.

Plot Summary

In Act I, Marlene is hosting a dinner at a restaurant to celebrate her promotion to management director of an employment agency called Top Girls. Her guests are five long-dead women from history: Isabella Bird, a 19th-century Scottish travel writer; Lady Nijo, a 13th-century Japanese concubine to the emperor who later became a nun; Dull Gret, a figure in Flemish lore who is depicted in a 1563 painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder; Pope Joan, who hid her gender and served as pope in the 9th century until a pregnancy gave her away; and Patient Griselda, written about in The Canterbury Tales (1392) and other works, whose husband stole her children and lied about killing them but returned them as teenagers—all to test her obedience as a wife. They talk about their mutual experiences with rape, sex, pregnancy, losing children, and the subjugation of women throughout history while eating and drinking a lot of wine.

Act II begins in the Top Girls office. Marlene interviews Jeanine, who is looking for a job that will let her travel, but Marlene restricts her options to non-travel jobs because she’s getting married. In the next scene, 16-year-old Angie plays with her best friend, 12-year-old Kit. Both their mothers are uncomfortable with the long-time friendship, but the two girls are like sisters. Angie’s mother, Joyce, calls her to come in several times, but Angie ignores her. Angie tells Kit that she is going to kill her mother. She confides in Kit that she thinks her aunt, Marlene, who visited a year ago, is her real mother, and she plans to go and see her in London. They decide to go to the movies, but Joyce won’t let Angie go until she cleans her room. Angie goes in, and Joyce talks to Kit, who wants to be a nuclear physicist when she grows up. Joyce is surprised, because she thinks Angie isn’t smart and has no prospects for the future, especially since she dropped out of school. After Angie returns and Joyce goes inside, Angie repeats her threat to kill her mother. Back at the Top Girls Office, Marlene and her two now-subordinates conduct more interviews, limiting their prospects as Marlene did to Jeanine. Angie shows up for a surprise visit, and Marlene doesn’t know what to do with her. The wife of the man who was passed over for Marlene’s promotion stops by to blame Marlene for her husband’s resulting stress, anger, and poor health. She wants Marlene to give up the job, and Marlene puts her in her place. Angie is amazed. After a while, Angie falls asleep, and Marlene comments that the girl has no future.

Act III takes place a year earlier at Joyce’s house on a Sunday night. Joyce’s daughter Angie has invited her aunt Marlene to visit without consulting her mother, so it’s Marlene’s turn to show up unannounced. Marlene brings presents, but Joyce isn’t impressed. Marlene hasn’t visited in six years. Angie is thrilled with everything, including her aunt’s presence, but she has school in the morning and has to be sent to bed. Joyce and Marlene argue. Joyce resents Marlene for prioritizing her business career over the family, leaving Joyce to care for their ailing mother alone. Their argument reveals that Angie’s suspicion is correct: Marlene is her biological mother. Marlene got pregnant at 17, and Joyce agreed to raise the baby. Joyce is poor and works four jobs, but she refuses to take Marlene’s offers of child support. They fight over politics as well, as Marlene is a conservative who loves Margaret Thatcher and hates poor people, blaming them for their own circumstances, failing to see how her own success has been enabled by her sister’s sacrifice. Joyce hates rich people and believes in socialism. Joyce goes to bed, deciding that their differences are too great. They can’t be friends, and Marlene shouldn’t come back anytime soon. Angie comes out of her room, scared and looking for her mother. She finds Marlene, who tries to comfort her and asks if she had a bad dream. Angie answers cryptically, “Frightening” (87).