Back on top
There are always risks involved reviving “issue” plays from a previous era which may have been topical and relevant at the time but in this fast-changing world could now be seen as dated dramatic shibboleths. Not so Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls (National Theatre) which emerges from a feted but controversial Royal Court premiere in 1982 with a poignancy that will not be lost on aspirational women at a time when yet again the gender pay gap is making headlines and company directors remain predominantly male. It suggests that we have made little progress, some areas are better than others, but this audaciously creative play will undoubtedly reignite the debates in this and other areas of discriminatory behaviour against women.
Structurally it’s a mish mash of self-deprecating satire and ’mockumentary’, yet fiercely intelligent making for an uneasy ride whatever your politics. The opening is an edible gem, a dinner hosted by recruitment diva Marlene (Katherine Kingsley) who brings together an eclectic and loquacious group of women, both fictional and real, each one trying to upstage the other, talking incessantly and listening little. An absolute hoot but in among the absurdity lurks a serious message of giving up on children which leads into an affecting conversation between two young women which is as bizarre as it is moving. Soon after Churchill digs her writing claws into Margaret Thatcher, an easy target at the time and somewhat ironically a topical parallel to the woes and weakness of our current prime minister.
Wind forward, after an ineffectual trip into the employment agency, to a climatic finale that burns with familial resentment and jealousies as Marlene visits older sister Joyce (Lucy Black) in her country pile. It crackles with tension and revelation, suddenly their history is exposed for the travesty and painful series of episodes that it was, linking us back to that first scene minus the fiction. The joker in the pack is Joyce’s belligerent daughter Angie, a striking debut by Liv Hill. Lyndsey Turner’s production is and while the visual alchemy is neat it can sometimes detract from Churchill’s multi-layered writing which even today hits home, a sad indictment on our society. The day we no longer have to discuss girls being on top as anything but the norm will indeed be one for celebration. Hopefully I’ll still be around to see it.
Meanwhile Sotira Kyriakides is dance struck…
The English National Ballet’s She Persisted (Sadler’s Wells) celebrates the works of three female choreographers: Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Broken Wings, Stina Quagebeur’s Nora and Pina Bausch’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rites of Spring). Broken Wings’ presents a vibrant, dramatic and passionate biopic in dance of the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, presented as an exotic bird of paradise with damaged wings. Katya Khaniukova portrays Frida’s life with intense virtuosity, her dance reflecting Frida’s joie de vivre as a schoolgirl, the quivering pain after her streetcar accident and turbulent relationship with her husband, the artist Diego Rivera, portrayed by Irek Mukhamdeov.
Nora, inspired by the main character in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, has a slower and subtler underlying emotional intensity. The ever-wheeling dance movements of Nora (Crystal Cora) as she unites and then separates from her husband Torvald, (Jeffrey Cirio), interrupted by the dramatic dance movements of Krogstad (Junor Souza), beautifully interpret Ibsen’s play and Nora’s road to independence from the imprisonment of her marriage to Torvald.
Le Sacre du Printemps mesmerises with incredible moments of sheer brilliance and symbolic splendour, as masculine and feminine forces in nature and the search for sacrificial victims are dramatically evoked by the dancers, underpinned by Stravinsky’s powerful music.
Finally Helena Lavou is down then up…
John Brittain’s A Super Happy Story (About Feeling Super Sad) at The Vaults is the type of event that can wake the dead and distress the living. It’s bonkers, its musical, it’s cabaret with a twist and of course there is a serious side to it. The focus is teenager Sally (Madeleine MacMahon), full of adventure and revolutionary zeal and then depression kicks in. Today we take mental illness far more seriously and to offset the stigma and negativity the show is full of glitter and music to lift the gloom. You will be educated and entertained and it certainly changed my mood from ☹ to ?.
Top Girls – 020 7462 3000
She Persisted – 020 7863 8000
A Super Happy Story’ – www.thevaults.london
