Photo Courtesy Renaissance Theaterworks
Saturday’s preview performance of Renaissance Theaterworks’ Top Girls, was a smashing success and a doorway to the important ongoing dialogue on gender parity in the workplace. Playwright Caryl Churchill’s 1982 script focuses on Marlene, who has just been promoted to managing director over her male peers in an employment agency. The play opens with a breathtakingly precise, fugue-like sequence—a dinner party Marlene throws to celebrate her success with famous women of history, literature and myth. These “top girls,” all of whom made colossal personal sacrifices to achieve their status, aptly contextualize Marlene’s character for the following scenes. These later sequences look in on her professional life in a callous, competitive industry, as well as her natal home in rural Suffolk where her family leads a difficult, working-class life.
The acting ensemble is uniformly marvelous under Suzan Fete’s direction. In the dinner scene alone, they not only handle the famously challenging scripting with aplomb, but also bring understated yet visceral realism to all roles, no matter how fantastical. In the context of a discussion spanning travel, lovers, religion, philosophy and loss of children, each character contributes a jaw-dropping personal account with the impact coming from her frankness of delivery.
Performances in the more realistic following scenes continue to astound. Particularly notable is the duo of Marlene (Cassandra Bissell) and her sister Joyce (Libby Amato) whose argument reflects the still-timely contest between the individualist capitalism championed by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and the need to care for those who cannot care for themselves. A scene between 16-year-old Angie (Elyse Edelman) and her younger friend Kit (Grace DeWolff) is likewise riveting. The pair unflinchingly embody the ubiquitous tension of adolescent friendship, here further complicated by socio-economic hardship, familial fracture and mental impairment.
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Production elements also deliver the goods in this marvelously presented dialectic drama. Amy Horst’s costumes are strikingly accurate (whether the character hails from 1982 London or mid-1200s Japan); they do much to ground a play that, in many ways, subverts our expectations for unified setting and linear storytelling. Stephen Hudson-Mairet and Julie Algrim’s scenic and projection design build out the broader historical contexts for the piece. Their collage-like series of screens framing the playing area are covered by changing images of women throughout recent history from milieus ranging from politics and labor movements to pop culture and academia.
Altogether, Renaissance’s Top Girls is a provocative and highly polished production. With sensitivity, humor and unwavering honesty, it invites us to consider the cost women pay in human relationships, personal ethics and general happiness for their success in a business world still dominated by men.
Through April 29 at the Broadway Theatre Center’s Studio Theatre, 158 N. Broadway. For tickets, call 414-291-7800 or visit r-t-w.com.
