![]() ![]() If the play ended there you’d be toasting a fairly fantastic piece of theatre. She needs to lob her hilariously coarse monosyllabic contributions with the same oomph as she does the bread rolls. Only Olivia Poulet fails to seize her sixth of the scene as the gruff Dull Gret, housewifely hell harrier of Flemish folklore. Laura Elphinstone’s pale, pinched and princess-peaked Patient Griselda arrives just in time for pudding, by which point Lucy Briers’ fantastic turn as the cross-dressing Pope Joan (just mannish enough in her mannerisms and with the broad charisma of an experienced crowd commander) is climaxing in a spurt of Latin and vomit. Next comes Catherine McCormack’s Lady Nijo (pictured left), every painted and silk-wrapped inch the Japanese emperor’s concubine but betraying her sweet composure with an anxiously fluttering fan. ![]() First to arrive, regal in blue with a rich Scottish accent, is Stella Gonet as the Victorian traveller Isabella Bird. Tim Shortall’s design (restaurant Prima Donna is a chandelier-decked affair through whose windows bright neon streaks zip by in the distance – an abstract view of life in the fast lane) extends the comic impact of the womens’ entrances with two sets of steps. But the exuberant clamour to connect quickly turns into a misery competition as each retreats further into her own horrible history. Excited to be out and to be heard, they talk over each other in a perfectly orchestrated chorus of female experience. In a measure of both her gutsy she-who-dares self-determinism and disregard for the old rules, and Churchill’s own commitment to presenting as broad a possible range of women’s voices, the guest list for the dinner party ranges from a ninth-century pope to a character from Chaucer. Marlene (Suranne Jones) – a go-getting Eighties New Woman (pictured below) with the slick social manners, stiletto heels and finger-clicking treatment of the silent waitress to prove it – has invited five powerful women from history and legend to celebrate her promotion to MD of the Top Girls Employment Agency. And here every drop of humour and pathos is wrung from the script, along with every drop of booze from the table, by a cast who are clearly relishing each minute. A surreal yet psychologically spot-on set-up for the scenes of Eighties professional and domestic life to come, its extraordinary opening scene conflates centuries, continents, life stories and whole passages of dialogue. ![]()
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