Seoul Players is returning to the stage this month with a production of Caryl Churchill’s “Top Girls,” an unconventional look at womanhood and what it takes for women to succeed.
The play was one of two chosen for Seoul Players’ spring season, with “Glengarry Glen Ross” featuring an all-male cast and “Top Girls” played by all women.
Although quite different plays, the company says that they both explore overlapping themes, including lies, deception and what it takes to be successful as a man or woman.
Director Siobhan Murphy said that the play’s discussion of success and expectations in “Top Girls” was something she thought would resonate with a Korean audience.
“Top Girls” (Robert Michael Evans)
“When it comes to gender equality, Korea hasn’t really caught up with the rest of the developed world and a lot of the issues that come up like not being expected to excel within a company and being expected to get married and have babies. That’s a huge issue in the play,” Murphy said.
“And even the issue of unwed pregnancy, where you have baby boxes coming up. The social stigma of having a baby out of wedlock is outrageous, and that’s one of the major themes in the play with Marlene’s baby,” she said. “She would not have been able to have her life and raise a family at her age.”
The play is unusual in its format, opening with a long dinner party attended by famous women from different periods of history. They include Isabella Bird, one of the first Westerners to write about Korea. She does not mention Korea in the play but talks about Asia in a bigoted way.
The play ditches fantasy for the second act and the same actors then play modern-day characters in an office, in which the main character, Marlene, discovers uncomfortable secrets about her mother.
Murphy studied the play at university but said she discovered new things about it by directing it, one being how the different characters played by the same actresses relate to each other and the protagonist.
For example the same actor plays Griselda and Jeanine and Nell.
Griselda, a character from Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” is depicted as submissive to her husband and even acquiesces when he takes her child away. Only toward the end of the dinner party does she begin to have doubts about this.
But Jeanine, who attends a job interview as a young aspirant, is more independent.
“During the interview she starts questioning her choices about whether she wants to get married and be with one person for the rest of her life: Maybe she wants to travel; maybe she doesn’t want to have kids,” Murphy said.
“And at the end the same actress is playing one of Mylene’s coworkers. She is really independent, has no intention of getting married and almost mocks men when she talks about them in an office setting.”
Seoul Players will be performing “Glengarry Glen Ross” by David Mamet in May.
“Top Girls” runs weekends from April 18-26 at 2 and 7 p.m. on Saturdays and 3 p.m. on Sundays at the Arts Tree Theater in Guro, Seoul. Korean subtitles will be shown.
For tickets and information contact seoulplayers@gmail.com or visit www.seoulplayers.org.
After the Sunday performances, there will be question and answer sessions for students during which audience members can ask questions to the directors and cast.
By Paul Kerry (paulkerry@heraldcorp.com)