1. What is the significance of Angie in Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls?
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2. Best answers included:
An understanding of Angie as the victim of Thatcherite politics and an individualistic society – many used a really good critical quote to support this
An understanding of Churchill’s views and included quotes from her (some know what she stands for and what her theatrical background is)
An understanding of how the three acts made sense together in relation to Angie (more than just mentioning ‘doubling with Gret’ in Act One)
A meaningful commentary on how CC creates an alienation effect and how this means we view Angie
Peppering of quotations throughout the essay showing a strong engagement with the text – often linking quotes together from across the play to reinforce an idea
A nuanced understanding of 1982 and a contemporary audience (gender equality legislation in place but cultural practice still discriminatory )
A balanced understanding of Angie – not just as a victim but as underestimated/ ambitious/ resilient
A strong sense of Top Girls being a play and an understanding of how Angie is constructed through stagecraft.

3. Ideas for an introduction
Angie is a victim of individualist Thatcherite politics and is used by Churchill to represent the difficulties experienced by the working class in 1980s Britain. Women, like Marlene, who represent the "bourgeois feminist" become oppressors not supporters of working class women. Tycer states that "by recognizing the socio-economic differences between women," Top Girls "encourage(s) a re- examination of feminist priorities."

4. A01 Angie: a reviled (insulted /criticised) character yet somehow she accomplishes a lot in the play – everyone underestimates her. This worsens CC’s critique against Thatcherite government – how?
Pepper quotes!
Marlene: ‘thick’
‘Packer in Tescos’
Kit: ‘Stupid fucking cow. I hate you’
Joyce ‘A big lump’
Yet she still manages to :
Host her own dinner part in Act 3
Have a real, if tense, friendship with Kit
Visit London and find her way to her aunt’s office along
She shows that she can be like Marlene ‘I’m not clever, just pushy’
Churchill emphasises Angie’s strength by doubling her with Gret (in apron and armour) who shows courage and independence (and who also experiences sisterhood)

5. AO2/1 Angie’s dress : a useful visual emblem of Angie’s desire to connect with her biological mother / structural device / symbol
Act 3
Stage direction: ‘It fits’
Angie: Beautiful. Beautiful. I love it.
Joyce: ‘You’d better take it off’
Marlene: ‘You can’t just hang it up and look at it.’
Act 2
Stage direction: ‘She has changed into an old best dress, slightly small for her’
A: ‘I put on this dress to kill my mother.’
How does Churchill use Angie’s dress to show Angie’s relationships with her adopted and biological mother?
What is the significance of our first seeing her wearing the dress in Act 2 when it is ill fitting and old?

6. A01 : Angie’s heart breaking pilgrimage to find her mother / non-linear structure
Act 2
Look at this heart wrenching quote:
Marlene: What have you been doing? Shopping? Tower of London?
Angie: No, I just come here. I come to you.
It arouses the audience’s piety because of its raw, honest, non-grammatical (it should be ‘came’ but it is present tense ‘come) construction; the simple, monosyllabic language; the repetitive ‘come’ like the words of someone bewitched; the personal pronouns ‘you’ and ‘I’ that make it so direct. In contrast, Marlene just interviews her.

7. A01 – more heart breaking evidence
Act 2. Angie reflects on the events a year ago that we see in Act 3: Marlene visits her and Joyce ‘ That was the best day of my whole life.’ Her question to Marlene in Act 2 ‘Don’t you want me?’takes on greater significance when we reach the end of the play. Churchill creates an alienation effect in her use of non-linear structure forcing a critical assessment of Marlene’s actions at the end of Act 3 rather than an emotional one for Angie at the end of Act 2. We are not given time to grieve for Angie’s realisation until it is too late.

8. A02 stagecraft methods in Act 2 to characterise Angie
How does Churchill use setting?
[Angie sits at Win’s desk] Do you think I could work here?
Yet in the same Act she is scene ‘squashed’ in a ‘shelter’ in her garden. She bridges both worlds. What does the juxtaposition show?
How does Churchill use stage positioning and entrances/exits?
Angie is on stage when Mrs Kidd ‘bursts’ in and gives her critique of Marlene’s ruthlessness: ‘miserable and lonely. You’re not natural’ Why does Churchill position Angie on stage during this altercation? How does it shape audience response to Marlene/Angie?
How does Churchill use dialogue? (unfamiliarity with middle class educated women with social graces)
Mrs Kidd: Very pleased to meet you
Angie: Very well, thank you

9. AO4 how typical is the play?
Churchill’s play was regarded as unique when first performed.
Partly because of its unusual techniques including a nonlinear construction, an overlapping dialogue, and a mix of fantasy and reality. Come critics have called this Churchill’s ‘feminine aesthetic’
Most plays about Thatcher’s Britain were strident studies of social deprivation and blustering fury. In contrast Top Girls is oblique (non- didactic) , witty, deeply felt and theatrically daring.
Contemporary reviews: some critics loved it ‘funny, fiercely serious’ others found it ‘disjointed’ and it left them ‘puzzled’
It is atypical in its privileging female experience. Female characters historically are merely adjuncts of men. The all female cast gives them a voice and agency.

10. AO3 context of production
Angie and Kit’s shelter – fear of nuclear war / the secrecy within the family is heightened against a backdrop of the cold war against the Soviet Union. Her fears aren’t just personal / national but international
Surge of women entering employment / workplace legislation protected maternity rights and equal pay/ Maggie as PM / Angie’s existence questions the reality & value of this progress
Abortion rights gave women autonomy over their bodies / attitude towards termination became more casual ? Personal sacrifice is inevitable to achieve professional success
Single mothers – rate increased / exacerbated the challenge to survive for the working class / 50% male divorcees never saw children / domestic violence only just legislated as a punishable crime
Unemployment doubled / miners strikes / socialism voiced by Joyce is juxtaposed by her political foil , the individualist Marlene, who bears resemblance to ‘Maggie’ . Angie reveres Marlene even though she denies her existence both as her daughter and as a working class girl ‘[The working class] doesn’t exist anymore.’

11. A03 context of reception– is it still relevant today?
There was a Top Girls revival in 2011 on the West End, London.
"terrifyingly topical in its portrait of an individualistic society in which the few thrive at the expense of the many“ (2011)
‘The terms in which the sisters argue about Thatcherite politics have not dated’
‘a modern classic’ ‘splendidly funny, inventive and deeply moving’
Caryl Churchill’s play about success, feminism and the 1980s could easily have been written last year – it is a play about individualism and capitalism against a commitment to society (2011)
But not everyone liked it in 2011, some critics found its ‘revelations’ about gender inequality too obvious in the 21st century ‘But the rest of us haven't been living in caves waiting to be presented with dramas that purport to be "terrifyingly topical" to open our eyes. We need theatre to analyse rather than to present the obvious.’

12. AO1/2 Connecting the three acts
Angie can be seen on a spectrum in between other inarticulate and mistreated women in the play; sitting between the silent waitress and the monosyllabic, but refreshingly courageous, Dull Gret. Churchill uses the silent waitress to reflect Angie’s potential future of servitude and frugality but also offers in Angie’s double, Gret, an alternative future achieved through single-minded bravery and ambition.

13. AO1/2 Connecting the three acts
However, Churchill warns that Angie’s wish for professional success and travel ‘to America’ is unrealistic, as mirrored by other naively ambitious characters such as Shona and Kit – who we are led to believe have not received the role models, careers advice and academic support to nurture and realise such professional futures.

14. AO1/2 Connecting the three acts
Whilst some have found the three acts confusing and incoherent, it is clear how Churchill uses echoes and mirroring to connect the lives of disparate women to voice concerns about the common experience of women.
A critic has suggested that each of the female characters in Act 1 mirrors some facet of Marlene's psyche; if this is so, Gret, Angie’s double, who reflects Marlene’s blue collared upbringing and the fiery ambition to pursue another life suggests that Angie and her biological mother have much in common- which makes it even more shameful that Marlene cannot find it in herself to support her.

15. Wider reading
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