Top Girls review

Tala Gouveia heads the cast as uncompromising businesswoman Marlene, exulting in an important promotion but undermined by ingrained doubts and deeply buried guilt. Although she represents a heightened archetype of hollow, self-serving ambition, Gouveia takes care to make the character feel three-dimensional. This is a nuanced, totally believable portrayal of a woman who has abandoned every personal attachment in pursuit of material success and the security she believes comes with it. Beside her, Saffron Dey gives troubled teenager Angie a hectic, high-strung energy, always bouncing from one thought to another, scampering about the stage before falling into sudden periods of exhausted, sullen stillness. Her interactions with Marlene are quietly heartbreaking, full of unspoken need.

Stepping in at late notice, Elizabeth Twells gives confident and charismatic performances in several roles, most prominently as 19th-century author Isabella Bird, who travelled the world despite experiencing serious illnesses. Refusing to be defined by her health problems, she’s a vigorous, unflappable figure, constantly butting heads with Nadia Anim’s haughty Japanese courtesan Lady Nijo. For her part, Anim conveys her character’s complications with real finesse, capturing the tensions of a forceful personality who nevertheless accepts as completely natural the life of sexual slavery she was indoctrinated into. Meanwhile, Lauren Lane is all prim poise and caustic wit as the ill-fated Pope Joan, whose personal search for truth led them to study both science and theology, living as a man before their discovery and subsequent murder. In later scenes, Lane invests office worker Win with an air of brittle cheerfulness undercut by quiet melancholy, haunted by a nagging awareness that despite a successful career, she remains lonely and unfulfilled.