Caryl Churchill's 'Top Girls' Explores The Dark Side Of Girl Power

1982. Do You Really Want To Hurt Me, Come On Eileen and Ebony And Ivory topped the charts. Shoulder pads and hair were big, and ambitions were even bigger, as women found a place in the corporate and political worlds and planned to crash through the glass ceiling. It was a time of positivity, especially in the UK, as a young Princess Diana challenged the dullness of the Royal Family (Prince William was born in 1982) and a woman, Margaret Thatcher, had recently been elected Prime Minister.

This was also the year that British playwright Caryl Churchill's play Top Girls opened in London. It soon moved to New York and was already declared a masterpiece. With an all-female cast and an experimental narrative, it asked if the '80s were going to be as "stupendous" as Marlene, the Thatcher-loving central character and Top Girls Employment Agency boss, thinks they are going to be. And also if women in positions of power would use their power differently.

The new Sydney Theatre Company production — the latest instalment in a series of recent Churchill productions — is directed by Resident Director Imara Savage, in what will be her sixth work for the company. She describes Churchill, who is also a favourite of STC's new AD Kip Williams, as "just a genius". This is Savage's first time directing a Churchill, but serendipitously, she played Marlene when she was 13 - "in my power suit" - in a school production.

Savage is fascinated by Churchill's observation of people and her "amazing" study of complex characters. The play's 15 roles - played by Paula Arundell, Kate Box, Michelle Lim Davidson, Claire Lovering, Heather Mitchell, Helen Thomson, and Contessa Treffone - includes historical characters, both real and fictional, as well as Marlene's employees and family. Of her well-heeled ensemble, Savage is proud to say she has a "dream cast" of "really smart women."

Top Girls begins as a dreamlike historical-fantasy dinner party, where Marlene celebrates her promotion with women who have succeeded in traditionally male roles, from a Pope to an invader of Hell. It moves into the power-suit workplace and then to the domestic home, as gender politics become mingled with the questions of status and class that also swelled within the British consciousness in '80s. While the women's stories move from the historical to reflections on society to personal revelation, each ultimately becomes about loss.

Savage explains how "there are many different models of women in this world" who are all successful in some ways, "but none of them 'have it all'. Also, all of them have sacrificed some very important part of what it is to be a woman."

Churchill's work was almost prophetic in its understanding of how workplaces were not going to be "stupendous" for all women, especially if the benchmarks for success had already been set by systems that didn't include female leaders. As it's firmly placed in Britain in the early 1980s, Top Girls is often seen as a period piece, but Savage is approaching the production by looking at it specifically from 1982 - when "American corporate feminism" and its "capitalist spirit" was infiltrating both the UK and Australia.

"The system feels a bit broken and needs an overhaul if you really want to get women into these kinds of positions without feeling that they have to sacrifice everything."

"We're looking at it retrospectively, but its first audience was looking at it from a place of not knowing." The play's vision of the '80s was an imagined future. "Marlene's office isn't a real place; it's a hypothetical proposition and a kind of potential utopia or anti-utopia".

However, the play wasn’t attempting to predict the future, nor was it intended as a feminist parable. Moreover, it questions if the Thatcher ethos of unrestrained individualism meant that women’s successes would be at the expense of community and the socialist feminist understandings the 1970s. As Savage notes, "If women were in positions where they made decisions about other people's livelihoods, would they behave in ways that are more sympathetic or empathetic?"

While Marlene saw hope and guaranteed success, Savage explores how Churchill saw something "scary happening in terms of success, what it means to be successful and what women are aspiring to." Thirty-six years later, it's unnerving to know that the future for some of the women in Top Girls was far from "stupendous".

"In some ways, you have to feel for people like Marlene," Savage explains. "Because, like Thatcher, their management style models were men. They had to sit within a patriarchal kind of model - and that possibly will never lead to a situation where they are happy or whole or complete."

At a time when political and economic conservatism are strong and women are still demanding workplaces that are safe and welcoming, Top Girls' themes and questions continue to resonate. Of today, Savage says, "The system feels a bit broken and needs an overhaul if you really want to get women into these kinds of positions without feeling that they have to sacrifice everything. That kind of resonates for me because I'm a parent and I work and I don't want to give up either one. That's quite hard to negotiate. 

"I feel like men should be asking for that too," she suggests, with a laugh. "Otherwise it becomes like we're just there to provide ... I don't know, it all becomes about working, business and money. What happened to community and society and family and all of that stuff?" 

Savage wonders if maybe the character of Dull Gret was on the right track. Dulle Griet, or Mad Meg, was the subject of 1562 painting where she leads an army of women to destroy hell because (according to Churchill), "I'd had enough, I was mad, I hate the bastards."

"Her cry of women coming together and fighting against the devil and walking straight into the mouth of hell ­- maybe it's something about radically annihilating the systems that existed previously and historically and creating something new that doesn't stick within a patriarchal framework," Savage offers.

This new production of Top Girls continues the challenge to create something new. As Churchill set out to write "a non-masculine unconventional narrative", Savage says, "We've embraced the jaggedness and the disparate nature of the work because the female experience doesn't really sit within a really consumable, palatable or understandable narrative, it can be confusing - and we push that."

Top Girls plays from 12 Feb at Sydney Opera House.