The Silo Theatre Company’s Shane Bosher is at it again with a gutsy girls night out for the ages. Head along to Auckland’s new Q Theatre to see Top Girls from 23 February. 


It’s the 1980s in London, and Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls protagonist – the high-flying corporate machine that is Marlene – is having a dinner like no other. We’re talking a dauntless world traveller from the Victorian era, a hell-storming peasant warrior out of a Flemish Renaissance painting, a 13th century Japanese courtesan turned Buddhist nun, a too-dutiful wife from the Canterbury Tales or a martyred female pope from the Middle Ages.


Top Girls as a whole captures the contrasts and conflicts between American feminism (independent success and wealth) and British socialist feminism (collective group gain) in the 1980s.
The play features a star-studded cast, including Danielle Cormack as Marlene, alongside legendary comic talent Rima Te Wiata, Shortland Street’s Nancy Brunning, Bronwyn Bradley (Assassins; Go Girls; Live Live Cinema), Rachel Forman (Shortie’s Paige Monroe), Wellington’s Sophie Hambleton, and our own Abigail Greenwood, who express spoke to about the show.


“I play three characters,” Abigail says. “I play a waitress at this surreal dinner party, but I don’t say anything throughout the act. My second character is 12-year-old Kit, who has had a hard upbringing in lower socio-economic England. My third character is Shona, who goes for an interview at Marlene’s Top Girls agency, and lies her whole way through the interview. She’s watched TV and advertising and decided what she needs to say in order to be a power woman.”


Abigail says acting in a Caryl Churchill play is “stimulating and challenging”, particularly as a young woman who considers herself reasonably strong, politically active and feminist.


“Being in Top Girls has encouraged me to find a dialogue about why I am a feminist; it’s challenged me to think about who I am. Caryl doesn’t judge her characters – she makes you qustion who these women are and how they got to be the way they are.


“Her work is a mind-bender and hilarious. It’s a piece packed with great female actors, a great premise, and because it’s set in the ’80s, a lot of sleek business-type costumes!”


Top Girls plays at Q Theatre, 305 Queen Street from 23 February – 18 March. Tickets are available at www.qtheatre.co.nz or by phoning 09 309 9771.