May 6, 2014
The Press RepublicanMay 1, 2014
By Steven Howell
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MONTREAL — Now this is how you throw a dinner party.
The rise to the top and the meaning of success are explored in Caryl Churchill’s 1980s British play “Top Girls,” which opens tonight at the Segal Centre for Performing Arts.
Set in Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s Britain, “Top Girls” follows the story of Marlene, a rising executive who has just been promoted to the top of a London employment agency. To celebrate, she throws a dinner party and invites a fantasy guest list that includes the Victorian adventuress Isabella Bird, a Japanese Emperor’s mistress, Pope Joan and a Flemish avenger born from a Brueghel painting. In all, seven actresses portray 16 characters with Laura Condlln leading the way in the plum role of Marlene.
And yes, it’s spelled Condlln.
“It’s Welsh,” she said. “So don’t put a vowel at the end.”
The spelling sometimes creates a little confusion.
“I actually had to send my university degree back,” Condlln quipped.
As for the play?
“Where do you begin?” she asked. “It’s wonderful, it’s domestic, it’s very human and yet so worldly and universal and political.”
Condlln says one could consider it a feminist play.
“At the start,” she said. “And then it turns into a socialist play.”
DINNER PARTY
The opening scene is a “surrealist” dinner party, indeed Marlene’s celebration for her new promotion.
“And her guests are famous dead women,” Condlln said.
Marlene choosing the guest list is an off-stage given.
“It’s a puzzle,” she said.
But her character of Marlene is the only one in the cast who doesn’t change characters.
“I move through the play following my journey,” Condlln said. “So the audience follows the choices that Marlene makes and can reflect and either agree or disagree with them as they realize what’s she’s done to get where she is.”
The play is not told in a chronological fashion, says Condlln.
“So that’s also interesting because it ranges from about 1982 and the cusp of Thatcher’s reign and ends back in time,” she said. “I think Churchill wrote this play in reaction to what was happening in the government at that time.”
‘HONORING THE JOURNEY’
Thatcher is an unseen but present entity in the play.
“The political temperature of the time is spoken about in the play,” Condlln said. “And it’s interesting in that it’s all women in the play, which is very exciting and very rare.”
A major theme explored is the meaning of success and more specifically what “success means to women.”
“It looks at breaking through and transcending boundaries that were put on women,” Condlln said.
The previously mentioned dinner party employs a cast of real and created characters.
“But Marlene has selected them to celebrate with because they have all achieved great things,” she said. “They all have broken through those boundaries that were traditionally imposed on the female sex. But each of their successes has come at great cost.”
Condlln says that all of the characters in the play face the challenges set against them. Some do so successfully. Some do not.
But Condlln adds that it’s not a comparison between successful men and women.
“It’s honoring the journey that women take to get where they wanted to be.”