Everything you need to understand or teach
Top Girls by Caryl Churchill.
Products may contain comprehensive summaries, analysis, notes, articles, essays,
lesson plans and more. See below for details on what is included.
Although it was obvious from her early radio play The Ants (1962) that Caryl Churchill could write good dialogue, she had difficulty translating that talent to a stage where she would be noticed. Neve...
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Below, Watt censures the poor integration of the three scenes in Top Girls and judges the play of little interest to American audiences.
The story of an ugly duckling whose destiny is to remain an ugl...
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In the following essay, Marohl demonstrates how Top Girls succeeds in debunking the myth of the feminist hero whose achievements are gained through her imitation of powerful men rather than through th...
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Top Girls premiered in London at the Royal Court Theatre, transferred to New York for a run at the Newman Theatre, and then returned to London for further performances. In the following review of a pe...
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Taylor offers a very mixed assessment of a London performance of Top Girls. He finds both the theme and structure poorly delineated and considers much of the piece "fundamentally … old-f...
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In the following essay, Marohl discusses the class discrimination that exists amongst workers of varying rank and wage levels in Churchill's Top Girls.
For a decade now, deliberate confusion of...
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Critical Essay by Benedict Nightingale
[Cloud Nine] and Top Girls, taken together, show that [Caryl Churchill] has evolved into a playwright of genuine audacity and assurance, able to use her consider...
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Critical Essay by John Russell Taylor
In Cloud Nine you could not always quite produce a logical reason why one thing followed another, but somehow you never doubted that it did. Top Girls … pr...
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Critical Essay by Frank Rich
["Top Girls"] is no match for its predecessor ["Cloud 9"], but, happily, it is every bit as intent on breaking rules…. The actresses in ...
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Critical Essay by Benedict Nightingale
One of the questions Caryl Churchill put to her fellow-feminists in Top Girls … was this. What have you, or indeed anyone, to offer the woman who hasn�...
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Critical Essay by Frank Rich
["Fen"] could well be called "Bottom Girls." As the author's "Top Girls" told of Marlene, a self-made businesswoman who se...
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The first act of the play Top Girls by Caryl Churchill clearly introduces feminist themes. Marlene, the host and the main character, hosts a dinner party in a restaurant in London to celebrate her pro...
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Teaching Top Girls
All teaching products sold separately.
Top Girls Lesson Plans contain 129 pages of teaching material, including:
Caryl Churchill
Critical Review by Douglas Watt
Character Sketches of Woman in Act I of "Top Girls"
