The power lunch to end all power lunches

Oklahoma City Theatre Company (OKCTC) brings Top Girls to the stage May 12-22. The New York Times describes the drama as, "A blistering yet sympathetic look at women who achieve success by adopting the worse traits of self-made men.... Truly original." Top Girls is a 1982 play written by Caryl Churchill. It won an Obie Award for Best Play.

“In the surreal first scene of Top Girls, ‘Marlene,’ a career-driven woman on her way to the top, invites a few friends to join her in celebrating her promotion,” said OKCTC’s Rachel Irick, the play’s director. “Not too much seems out of the ordinary until the women start to arrive.”

Then, a classic, out-of-control power lunch ensues. Irick explains, “They appear as a collection of obscure women from history and literature including Pope Joan, who disguised herself as a man and became Pope around 854-856.”

Other women at the luncheon, include, “Isabella Bird, a Victorian era world explorer; Lady Nijo an 11th century Japanese concubine; Dull Gret, a peasant of Flemish folklore who leads an army of women to pillage Hell; and Patient Griselda, the long-suffering wife from Chaucer’s A Canterbury Tale.”

As the play unfolds, we find Marlene has left her ‘poor’ life and illegitimate child with her sister Joyce, in order to tread the path to ‘success.’ The daughter, Angie, now an adolescent, shows up in the shorter scenes that follow, along with the women from the luncheon – but with a twist.

“This time, they are women in Marlene’s office and her adolescent daughter Angie,” says Irick. “Churchill’s feminist epic weaves complex scenes together examining the colliding worlds of career versus traditional family roles and relationships between women in the workplace.

“These insightful, sometimes humorous scenes reveal an oppressive world against the early 1980s backdrop of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain where, even in the absence of men, women oppress each other with patriarchal stereotypes and expectations,” notes Irick.

“Despite its serious subject matter, audiences will discover several silly moments,” she says. The women at the dinner party, in varying stages of inebriation, ‘one-up’ each other with colorful stories from their lives. Pope Joan devolves into a litany of patchwork pseudo-Latin phrases all the while balancing her towering Papal tiara. In the office, Marlene’s co-workers gleefully gossip about her over a coffee break.

The play is contemporary and examines the role of women in society and the toll that being a ‘successful woman’ takes.

The OKCTC production of Top Girls opens at the Civic Center Music Hall’s CitySpace Theatre May12, with a $10 preview night. Performances are May 13 through May 22. Tickets are $20, $15 for students and seniors, and $10 per person for groups of 10 or more. They may be purchased by phone at (405) 297-2264, in person at the Civic Center Music Hall box office, 201 N. Walker Ave., in downtown OKC, or online at MyTicketOffice.com.

The Gayly 5/8/2016 @ 11:00 a.m.