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Top Girls: Methuen Student Edition (Open University Set Book) |
Author: Caryl Churchill
Published: 2008-09-01 |
List price: $13.95
Our price: $11.86
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As of: January 08th, 2009 08:24:05 AM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Definitive of great theatre
So deep and dense with facts, theory and symbolism that I thought she broke my brain! I have never been more pleased with a play. This was a masterpiece.
A strongly recommended addition
Marlene (Amy Brenneman) has just been made Managing Director of the 'Top Girls Employment Agency' in Maggie Thatcher's anything-goes England of the high-flying 1980s. But in pursuing her professional success, Maggie doesn't really have any friends - but she is in possession of a personal past she'd just as soon forget. At a party where famous women from history collects, Maggie discovers that life above the 'glass ceiling' of the business world isn't really all that satisfying. Supported by an outstanding cast that includes Megan Austin Oberle, Kirsten Potter, Samantha Robson, Kate Steele, Concetta Tomei, and Missy Yager, this Caryl Churchill play, "Top Girls", is professionally directed by John Rubinstein and presents the listener with a truly impressive 'theatre of the mind' experience - the kind that is special to the resonating imagination and epitomizes the best of what live theatre has to offer an appreciative audience. Flawless produced and recorded, "Top Girls" is a strongly recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library audiobook and Theatrical Studies collections.
 Marvelous, save the first scene.
Caryl Churchill, Top Girls (Methuen, 1982)
I almost stopped reading this play altogether at the conclusion of the first scene. I ended up glad I continued on, but really, there would have been so many better ways to handle that first scene. Putting it somewhere else in the play, for example.
Top Girls concerns Marlene, a woman just promoted to the head of her branch office of the Top Girls temp agency. She was promoted over a man, and in celebration, she imagines for herself a lavish dinner party, the guests for which are a number of notable historic women. This is understandable, and having other players in the play playing guests whose personalities are mirrored in their other roles is clever. But, really, the scene takes up an entire quarter of the play's length, and the information you get in the scene that's actually relevant to the plot is summed up in the first sentence of this paragraph. (You don't find out about the second sentence until later.) There's a lot more going on in the play's remaining four scenes, much of which is quite important, but it's shuffled off for this massive dinner party.
Once we get back into the real world, though, things get quite a bit more interesting. Marlene's niece Angie wants to run away from home and come live with Marlene, whom she sees as a great success, while Angie's mother, Joyce, is content to stay in the country eking out an existence and griping about everything possible. Angie's odd friend Kit is always hovering about in the background, being ominous. At Top Girls, life goes on, with the employees gossiping and interviewing potential workers.
The play's final four scenes are very good stuff, with all sorts of insight into their characters and action that flows through the talkiness. And in retrospect, again, the dinner party scene works within this framework, but it would probably have worked better elsewhere in the play (at the end of act one? Between the acts?). Suffer through it, though, and the play will reward you for it. ***
 Feminism through the ages?
I read Top Girls in my dramatic literature class in college. Reading the play can be very helpful if you plan to attend a performance. Characters are constantly interrupting each other mid-sentence and an audience can miss much of the dialouge. The concept for the play is wonderful. It examines women's lives throughout history- from Joan of Arc to women in a temp agency- all sitting down to dinner. The dialogue is exceptional and the each woman's story can fill a play in itself. However, this is definately a play you will want to see acted on stage. It's also a fun play to read/ act out loud with girlfriends because it raises many issues which concern contemporary women.
Feminism through the ages?
I read Top Girls in my dramatic literature class in college. Reading the play can be very helpful if you plan to attend a performance. Characters are constantly interrupting each other mid-sentence and an audience can miss much of the dialouge. The concept for the play is wonderful. It examines women's lives throughout history- from Joan of Arc to women in a temp agency- all sitting down to dinner. The dialogue is exceptional and the each woman's story can fill a play in itself. However, this is definately a play you will want to see acted on stage. It's also a fun play to read/ act out loud with girlfriends because it raises many issues which concern contemporary women.
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