Fourth-wave feminism can learn a thing or two from the 1980s play Top Girls | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

The play reminds us that any feminism worth its salt needs to transcend questions of individual identity

There has been a trend in fourth-wave feminism for exploring the stories of women overlooked by history; but almost 40 years before Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, Top Girls did it, for grownups. Caryl Churchill’s 1982 play, now revived at the National Theatre by Lyndsey Turner, is perhaps best known for its opening scene – a Saturday night dinner party featuring Pope Joan, Lady Nijō, Dull Gret, Isabella Bird, Patient Griselda and a Thatcherite recruitment manager called Marlene. It’s a genius opener, a dreamlike sequence in which the women share their tales of suffering and patriarchy, poignantly but also hilariously, as they proceed to get more and more wasted on Frascati. It’s very, very funny. It sticks the knife in while you’re laughing, off-guard, and then twists it.

Related: Top Girls review – Churchill's study of bourgeois feminism gets an epic makeover

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2DBiCB0