Anyone seeing TOP GIRLS tonight?- Page 3

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 4/19/08 at 4:26pm

I can't find my source, but here are some excerpts from the paper I wrote (SPOILERS!!). I hope this will answer some questions people had an explain the first act.

Possibly the most powerful character at the party is Pope Joan. It was believed that, in the 9th century, a woman managed to disguise herself as a man and ascend to the papacy. She reigned for about three years, only to be discovered when she gave birth to a child during a public procession. She was immediately stoned to death for her act of heresy.

In Top Girls, the actor who portrays Pope Joan is also cast as Louise, an older woman who comes to Marlene’s agency for a job. Louise is quitting her old job because she says her coworkers see her as a man. They do not respect her womanly qualities and she feels stifled. Louise is looking for the escape that Joan never got before she winds up with the same fate.

Lady Nijo is another historical character. She was a concubine to the Japanese emperor in the 11th century. She attempts to gain power there by adhering to the stereotype of women at the time. She is obedient, even letting the emperor beat her when it is customary. However, when the submission becomes too much, she tries to assert her rights and is expelled from the palace. She spends the next twenty years traveling the countryside as a Buddhist nun. At the death of her father, she is not permitted to be at his side.

Nijo’s sacrifices parallel those of Marlene. Marlene gave up her only daughter, Angie, to her older sister. Joyce has raised Angie and Marlene only gets to see her once a year or less. Marlene, unlike Nijo, seems perfectly content with the situation, until she is faced with the effect it has had on Angie. Only then does she realize that her desire to be on top affects more people than just her, and she begins to feel guilty.

The character of Win, a worker in the employment agency, is played by the person who plays Nijo. Like her medieval counterpart, Win is a concubine of sorts. The first time we meet her character, she tells us about her fling with a married man. She delights in her power to attract men, much like Nijo, yet she does not attach herself to any one man. She enjoys her extravagant lifestyle. She is content to slowly work within the system to gain power, rather than submit to others until a certain point, then explode and make a scene.

Another fictional character from history is Patient Griselda. She was originally a character of Chaucer from medieval Europe. Griselda is a poor girl who has the marquis appear at her house one day and request her hand in marriage. Naturally, her father grants his blessing and she is whisked off to the marquis’ estate for a life of jewels and riches. At first, she is very happy, but when she gives birth to their first child, it becomes clear that her husband does not trust her. In order to test her true feelings for him, he claims, she has to give up her baby to his control, even if it means he will kill it. Although reluctant, she agrees and gives up the child when it is time. She does not even question his reasoning and, in the play, she acts as if it made perfect sense and there was no other option besides obeying her husband blindly. Even four years later, when he takes her second child, she does not see anything wrong with her actions, or lack thereof. His test of her feelings extends so far that he expels her from the palace, only to return to her house much later and explain that it was all a test. He presents her with her children, for he had never really killed them, and proposes to her all over again. Naturally, Griselda is overjoyed and returns to him.

Griselda is connected to the character of Nell, another office worker in the agency. Nell seems to be the opposite of Griselda, rejecting the traditional qualities of women that Griselda embodied. She sneers that men do not like to hire women in sales positions because they are afraid the women will be too nice and consider the other person’s feelings. Her sarcasm makes it perfectly clear that she would never put someone’s feelings before her job performance. She also confides to Win that she could “play house ace” to the man intent on marrying her, but she does not want to. She would rather stay a working girl and serve herself without worrying about raising a family.

Isabella Bird is a fascinating character. She lived during the Victorian era and traveled the world, refusing to settle down with a family. She married twice, but only when she enjoyed the same freedom with her husband as she did when she traveled to Asia. She never had children, but she wrote many books and served as ambassadors to some nations. She lived a very full life. As much as she has rejected the traditional female qualities of her time, she still wants to be viewed as a respectable lady. Even though she is arguably the happiest and most successful historical character in the play, even she was never able to reconcile her personal goals with the notion of children.

Typically, Isabella Bird is double cast with Joyce, Marlene’s sister. The connection between the two of them, like Griselda and Nell, seems to be that of opposites. Joyce has chosen to raise a family and, as a consequence, is stuck at home. She is defined by her responsibility to Angie and her sick mother. She was not even able to make her marriage work. She tells Marlene that she is not able to travel much. She does not have nearly as much freedom as Isabella, yet she does have the family that Isabella never had time for.

The casting of Top Girls suggests a connection between the past and now. Churchill demonstrates that, as much as we try to convince ourselves we are moving forward, we have been going through the same struggles for centuries. The struggle between personal ambition and family responsibility will never be resolved for more than one person at a time. Churchill just shows us a collection of people who have attempted to resolve the conflict in their own way and then leaves it up to the audience to resolve the conflict for themselves.

Updated On: 4/19/08 at 04:26 PM

[MiracleElixir]

Posted: 4/19/08 at 5:04pm

Yeah, it's a pretty excellent, though "out there", piece, so as long as the actors are up to snuff, I'm fairly confident I'll enjoy it.

That said, given its unconventional nature, I'm not surprised to hear certain people say its "the worst thing they've seen in years" (always a comment that makes it clear someone isn't prone to hyperbole or overstatement, right?)

If it helps anyone any, here are some things Churchill has said when speaking about the play in the past; thought they might give people a slightly clearer idea of what she was trying to do:

"The ideas for Top Girls came from all kinds of things. A lot of it went back a really long way. The idea for Dull Gret as a character I found in some old notebook from 1977 or ’78. There’d been the idea of a play about a lot of dead women having coffee with someone from the present. And an idea about women doing all kinds of jobs. It was also that Thatcher had just become prime minister; and also I had been to
America for a student production of Vinegar Tom and I had been talking to women there who were saying things were going very well: they were getting far more women executives, women vice presidents and so on. And that was such a different attitude from anything I’d ever met here, where feminism tends to be much more connected with socialism and not so much to do with women succeeding on the sort of capitalist ladder. All of those ideas fed into Top Girls."

"What I was intending to do was make it first look as though it was celebrating the achievements of women and then – by showing the main character, Marlene, being successful in a very competitive, destructive capitalist way – ask, what kind of achievement is that? The idea was that it would start out looking like a feminist play and turn into a socialist one, as well."


For those who hated what they saw, or were at least confounded by it, googling some interviews with Churchill might help a little bit.
Updated On: 4/19/08 at 05:04 PM

[Calvin]

Posted: 4/19/08 at 6:51pm

Interesting, Yero.

FYI, the doubling is done a little different in this production. Joyce/Isabella is double cast (Marisa Tomei) as is Lady Nijo and Win (Jennifer Ikeda).

However, Pope Joan is not double cast as Louise. Mary Beth Hurt, who plays the waitress in the first act, plays Louise. Martha Plimpton plays Pope Joan and Angie. And Dull Gret (Ana Reeder) is double cast as Nell, not Patient Griselda (Mary Catherine Garrison, who also plays Angie's friend and the other two job seekers).

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 4/20/08 at 1:31am

Weird. Dull Gret is usually the same actress as Angie (they're both "dull"). In my college's production, and generally, there is no waitress. If there was a waitress, it was the actress who played Angie's friend. I can't remember now. I think following the more traditional double casting would have aided people's understanding.

Pope Joan and Angie? That's bizarre. There's no connection there.