Churchill tells this story with a deeply empathetic feeling, and a marvelously mischievous sense of theatre form. When this actually happens, the sisters have to face up to how limited Angie's prospects are. In fact, Marlene is such a contrast to Joyce, that Angie fantasizes about matricide, and plans to run away from home to visit Marlene in London. Whenever she visits Joyce, she brings presents for both her sister and her young niece. To little Angie, Marlene is a wonderful aunt. In the context of Britain having another female prime minister, all this has not dated. Joyce has inherited her father's Labour and pro-trade-union views, and is emotionally a militant lefty, while the Tory Marlene is a great admirer of Margaret Thatcher, whose free-market policies she praises. Churchill not only compares the life outcomes of the two sisters but also, in the climactic final scene, explores the differences in their politics. Joyce is divorced from her husband and scrapes by with a handful of local cleaning jobs. In the words of his wife, Marlene is a "ball-breaker".Ĭhurchill argues that nurture is more important than natureīy contrast with the jet-setting Marlene, her sister Joyce has stayed at home, looking after their parents, and now with a teenage daughter called Angie, who is not doing very well at school and whose best friend is Kit, a much younger girl. Soon after, she has to deal with Mrs Kidd, the aggrieved wife of Howard, a colleague who expected to get the top job simply because of his sex. She is, in the words of the play, a "high-flying lady", and the play begins with her celebrating the fact that she has been appointed managing director of the Top Girls employment agency. Brought up in the Suffolk countryside by parents who struggled with poverty, with the father a brutal alcoholic, Marlene unexpectedly left home when she was a teenager, and has made a successful career ever since. The play tells the story of two sisters, the older Joyce and the younger Marlene. It proves, if proof were needed, that she is clearly the best living British playwright. Her 1982 play, Top Girls, finally getting a revival at this national flagship, is her masterpiece of masterpieces.
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