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Last night I unexpectedly had the evening free, and in an attempt to not be cranky about it (I've had a lot of crankiness recently; if it continues I may end up whinging here.), I walked to the ART, to see if there were any tickets available for the current Loeb Ex show. And there were.
So last night I saw Top Girls (Caryl Churchill), a play about women succeeding, and the price of success.
The first act is a dinner for six women from different times in history, while the rest of the play is about the host Marlene's life as she's promoted to management in the employment agency where she works. The first act is fascinating, coversations frequently overlapping, discussions crossing time and culture, fast and sometimes sharp. The rest of the play feels almost tangential to the first scene, and I was left unsure about the play. I had to think about it before realizing why those particular women were chosen for the first act, finding more of a wholeness in the play rather after the fact. [Side note: when I went looking today, I found that she's also written Cloud Nine, a very odd play I saw at Brandeis a couple of years ago, which I definitely didn't care for. This was more to my taste.]
The audience was on three sides of the stage, and the almost-in-the-round production was very aware of issues of sightlines and such, since through the first scene, the dinner, the characters rotated the table as well as themselves, so different characters were easy to see at different times. The food looked good, too, a whole meal, from soup to dessert, a variety of choices for each, plus 'wine'. My own dinner wasn't nearly so nice.
I don't remember the last time I saw a play that had only women characters. Men are referred to, but never appear on stage; they're not important enough, or have left, or are incapacitated. And that didn't feel odd or unbalanced, either.
On the whole, an interesting production. I'm glad I went.
So last night I saw Top Girls (Caryl Churchill), a play about women succeeding, and the price of success.
The first act is a dinner for six women from different times in history, while the rest of the play is about the host Marlene's life as she's promoted to management in the employment agency where she works. The first act is fascinating, coversations frequently overlapping, discussions crossing time and culture, fast and sometimes sharp. The rest of the play feels almost tangential to the first scene, and I was left unsure about the play. I had to think about it before realizing why those particular women were chosen for the first act, finding more of a wholeness in the play rather after the fact. [Side note: when I went looking today, I found that she's also written Cloud Nine, a very odd play I saw at Brandeis a couple of years ago, which I definitely didn't care for. This was more to my taste.]
The audience was on three sides of the stage, and the almost-in-the-round production was very aware of issues of sightlines and such, since through the first scene, the dinner, the characters rotated the table as well as themselves, so different characters were easy to see at different times. The food looked good, too, a whole meal, from soup to dessert, a variety of choices for each, plus 'wine'. My own dinner wasn't nearly so nice.
I don't remember the last time I saw a play that had only women characters. Men are referred to, but never appear on stage; they're not important enough, or have left, or are incapacitated. And that didn't feel odd or unbalanced, either.
On the whole, an interesting production. I'm glad I went.