Renaissance Theaterworks is indeed “Top Girl” among Milwaukee’s professional theater companies. It is a woman-founded, woman-run group that is celebrating its 25th season. Over the years, Renaissance has won numerous awards and grants. Renaissance has saved the best for the end of its current season, closing with Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls.
Seen by this reviewer almost 30 years ago at New York’s Public Theater, Top Girls hasn’t lost its punch – or its humor. During the current #metoo movement, the play seems timelier than ever. The current production keeps the play’s original time frame – early 1980s England, when Margaret Thatcher was the British government’s prime minister. Before the cast even steps onstage, the audience is drawn to some excellent projections that further reflect the signs of the times. The photos depict “women in charge:” Thatcher, of course, as well as some other major women figures of the time (Princess Diana, Queen Elizabeth, and Julie Andrews, dressed as a man in the film “Victor, Victoria”). Credit for the projections goes to Julie Algrim. The opening scene of Top Girls is the one that is usually remembered. It’s a London dinner party, celebrating the success of hostess Marlene (Cassandra Bissell) on her recent career promotion. Although Marlene seems not to notice that her friends are all from different centuries, drawn from history, legend, art, and literature. Each of these women was a “top girls” in their time. The guest list includes the infamous Pope Joan (Mary MacDonald Kerr), a woman who allegedly became Pope in 854 a.d.; Lady Nijo, (Karissa Murrell Myers) a 13th century Japanese concubine; Griselda (Grace DeWolff), an obedient wife who allows her husband to take away her children, only to return them years later; Isabella Bird (Jenny Wanasek), an intrepid, 19th century English explorer, and the hilarious Dull Gret (Gabriella Ashlin), who appears in a Brueghel painting while leading an army of women against a horde of demons in hell. Imagine this odd tableside tableau: Kerr, dressed in papal robes; Myers, who appears in whiteface and is dressed as a geisha; Wanasek, wearing a suitable wool traveling outfit; DeWolff, who appears in a gown and looks like a figure from a Hans Christian Anderson story; and Ashlin, who probably has the most fun of all. Topped by her gleaming battle helmet, she sniffs the meal suspiciously and tucks away some wine and silverware into her small wooden box when no one else is looking.
Instead of making this scene more natural, director Suzan Fete decides to dial it up a notch. The women’s dialogue overlaps (more than in the original), which speeds up the story and forces the audience to absorb snippets of several conversations simultaneously.
On her part, the unflustered Marlene seems not to take notice of this upside-down gathering of friends. She welcomes each woman warmly and ensures they all have enough to eat and drink at the restaurant. It is not a coincidence that Marlene keeps after the women servers to quickly deliver the meal and, later, more wine. One can easily imagine a smug, self-made, man giving such orders. When the party ends, Churchill shuffles the deck. Now, the actors who attended the dinner party reappear in Marlene’s world. They comprise her sniping co-workers, her poor relatives, and serve in various other capacities.
Back in the office, Marlene basks in the glow of her new role. She is wearing a fashionable, snug-fitting dress, and her hair is wrapped tightly around her head. She was chosen for the position over an older man with more seniority. He hasn’t been seen since the news was announced. Marlene is unsympathetic to the man’s wife (Mary MacDonald Kerr), who has been taking the brunt of her husband’s irrational reaction. Instead of empathizing with her, Marlene dismissively whisks the wife out of the office as soon as she can politely do so. Soon, the water cooler gossip focuses on the same man, who has had a heart attack. “Poor sod,” notes Marlene, with the quick precision that defines her uncompassionate nature.
At its core, Churchill’s play is about the sacrifices women make to move up the career ladder in a world controlled by men. Returning to the party scene for a moment, it is interesting that the guests either bore no children, or were killed when their child was born, or had their children taken from them. (Eventually, one of the women is rewarded for her submissiveness to her husband by having her half-grown children returned to her. It is at this moment that Lady Nijo comments glumly, “I’ll never get to see my children again.” Marlene, it seems, has no social life, much less any children.)
However, the hard-drinking Marlene does have a sister, Joyce. To better explain their relationship, the play snaps into a flashback sequence. It is Angie’s ninth birthday, and Marlene travels to her sister’s house. Angie (exceptionally played by Elyse Edelman) adores her aunt. She and Joyce (in an equally robust performance by Libby Amato) live in the small, working-class village where the sisters grew up. They begin to quarrel about life choices. Marlene says her level of success could never have happened in the village. Furthermore, she mimics the kind of plodding, uneducated man one would find for a husband there.
By the play’s end, this curtain-raiser becomes a consciousness-raiser. While those of us in the US cannot quite grasp the role of class—in addition to gender—that keeps women from getting ahead. Suzan Fete’s marvelous cast has achieved the near-impossible: by grabbing the play’s themes, they are able to unite the fantasy and naturalistic sequences in this multi-dimensional play.
