Date/Time
Date(s) - 5 Sep 2012
11:00 AM - 1:30 PM

Location
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre

Captioned Performance:  Wednesday, 5 September at 11am

Set in Margaret Thatcher’s England in the early 1980s, where power dressing and giant shoulder pads were all the fashion, Caryl Churchill’s stark and unflinching portrayal of the sacrifices women make to get to the top is still stingingly relevant.

Marlene is an ambitious career woman who has just been appointed head of the Top Girls Employment Agency. This aesthetically daring, politically provocative play tells the story of the firm and Marlene’s rise to power. An insightful commentary on bourgeois feminism, this bold and ingenious work offers one of theatre’s most honest portraits of what it means to be a woman in the modern world.

Top Girls examines the complex challenges working women face in the contemporary business world and society at large. We celebrate Marlene’s success, yet as she climbs the corporate ladder and breaks through the glass ceiling, she leaves her sisters behind. In doing so, the play asks, can we applaud her values? The shoulder-pads may have gone on the rubbish heap, but Churchill’s masterpiece continues to resonate.

Top Girls is one of the great plays of the late 20th century and cemented Caryl Churchill’s reputation as a leading playwright on the world stage. 2012 marks the 30th anniversary of a play as strikingly relevant today as it was when it was first performed. It is bound to have you passionately debating and discussing it for days

CONTAINS COARSE LANGUAGE