Saturday, February 18, 2012

Play: Top Girls

From EADT 24:
As some of the most powerful and eccentric women from myth and history sit down for dinner in 80s Britain, entertainments writer WAYNE SAVAGE talks to their host; Doc Martin actress Caroline Catz.

Pope Joan, stoned to death after giving birth; Lady Nijo, Japanese mistress of an emperor and later a Buddhist nun; Victorian explorer Isabella Bird, the patient wife from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Dull Gret from an oil painting by Flemish renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Not your usual dinner party guests.

As Caryl Churchill’s ground-breaking drama Top Girls plays out, you find their host, the ruthless Marlene - part feminist, part Margaret Thatcher Acolyte - has more in common with them than you think. Not just the inequalities and conflicts they’ve faced as a result of their gender.

Max Stafford-Clark’s critically acclaimed new production comes to the New Wolsey from February 21-25 following its sell-out run at Chichester Festival Theatre and triumphant West End transfer.

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