Caryl Churchill's Top Girls

Description

Caryl Churchill is widely considered to be one of the most innovative playwrights to haveemerged in post-war British theatre. Identified as a socialist feminist writer, she is one of the few British women playwrights to have been incorporated into the dramatic canon. Top Girls is one of Churchill's most well known and often studied works, using an all female cast to critique bourgeois feminism during the Thatcher era.

Alicia Tycer recently received her PhD from the University of California, Irvine and the University of California, San Diego's joint program in drama and theatre. She taught at UC Irvine, USA and wrote her dissertation on Contemporary Women Playwrights at the Royal Court Theatre from 1994-2000.

"A comprehensive and insightful approach...Tycer's commentary and analysis; reception and production histories, and practical ideas for understanding the play combine to persuade and to explicate Top Girls as 'still without significant equal in the feminist or mainstream canons'" - Professor Elaine Aston, Lancaster University, UK Briefly reviewed in the Year's work in English Studies journal, vol 89, No. 1 'The book provides intelligent readings of key scenes from the play and useful cultural and political background, as well as the changing critical views that this landmark play has elicited during a period of over twenty years'