Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, first performed in 1982, is a landmark of modern feminist theatre.
The play opens with a surreal dinner party: historical and mythical women from across time, from Pope Joan to Lady Nijo to a figure from Bruegel’s paintings, gather to celebrate Marlene, a modern career woman who has just been promoted at the Top Girls employment agency. Their stories, filled with triumph and suffering, reveal the price women have always paid to succeed in a man’s world.
The rest of the play shifts to Marlene’s life in Thatcher-era Britain, her sharp corporate world colliding with the struggles of her working-class family.
With its overlapping dialogue, bold structure, and mix of fantasy and realism, Top Girls asks: what does it mean for women to “have it all”? And what is lost in the pursuit of success?
Caryl Churchill’s play is witty, unsettling, and still fiercely relevant, a feminist classic that challenges us to rethink power, gender, and ambition.