Top Girls is a 1982 play by Caryl Churchill. It centres around Marlene, a career-driven woman who is heavily invested in women's success in business. The play examines the roles available to women in old society, and what it means or takes for a woman to succeed. It also dwells heavily on the cost of ambition and the influence of Thatcherite politics on feminism. Top Girls has been included on a variety of "greatest plays" lists by critics and publications. Productions The play was premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London on 28 August 1982. It was directed by Max Stafford-Clark, the Royal Court's artistic director, who premiered several of Churchill's plays. The cast was Selina Cadell, Lindsay Duncan, Deborah Findlay, Carole Hayman, Lesley Manville, Gwen Taylor and Lou Wakefield. A production ran at the Watford Palace Theatre November 2–18, 2006 before transferring to the Greenwich Theatre November 21–25, 2006. The cast included Rachel Sanders, Zoe Aldrich, Elaine Claxton, Sara Houghton, Emma Pallant, Claire Redcliffe and Hayley Jayne Standing. During the 2007–2008 New York theatre season, Manhattan Theatre Club presented the play at the Biltmore Theatre in a production starring Mary Catherine Garrison, Mary Beth Hurt, Jennifer Ikeda, Elizabeth Marvel, Martha Plimpton, Ana Reeder, and Marisa Tomei. The production was directed by frequent Churchill collaborator James Macdonald. The MTC production marked the Broadway premiere of Top Girls, though the original Royal Court production had visited New York's Public Theater. A 2011 revival at Chichester Festival Theatre, co-produced with Out of Joint and directed by the play's original director Max Stafford-Clark transferred to Trafalgar Studios in the West End, opening on 16 August 2011. The cast included Suranne Jones, Stella Gonet, Olivia Poulet, Lucy Briers, Laura Elphinstone, Lisa Kerr and Catherine McCormack. This production toured in the UK in early 2012, with a new cast including Caroline Catz as Marlene. In 2019 a production was staged at the Royal National Theatre in London, starring Katherine Kingsley, Amanda Lawrence and Siobhan Redmond, and directed by Lyndsey Turner. In 2021, a Portuguese version of the play was directed by Cristina Carvalhal and presented in Queen Maria II National Theatre, in Lisbon. Background Top Girls was written in the background of Margaret Thatcher's election as Britain's first female prime minister and deals with concerns such as Thatcher's right-wing politics, a shift in 1980s Britain from a socialist mindset to a more capitalist one, and