Top Girls

Caryl Churchill's broad, slightly psychedelic style is all over Bad Habit Productions' rendition of her 1982 opus "Top Girls," continuing now through April 27 and playing in repertory with "A Diamond in the Sky" at the BCA.

This has been, to some extent, the Season of Churchill -- not in the same way that it's been The Season of Chekhov (with notable productions of "The Seagull" and "The Cherry Orchard") or The Season of Romeo and Juliet (last fall saw at least two productions of Shakespeare's romance in area theaters, plus a new film version hitting screens nationally), but the fact that the esteemed Whistler in the Dark chose to present all Churchill all the time for its valedictory season says something about the power of the playwright to inspire.

Churchill also has the power to divide, and not strictly along gender lines -- though that's part of the controversy. Churchill could be thought of as a feminist playwright in general terms, but her overall preference for the surreal, the whiff of pungency that tends to accompany her work, and her ease with dropping odd or impossible elements into her plays speaks to larger ambitions. This isn't theater of man versus woman so much as theater in which everyone, friend and foe alike, is against everyone else -- including themselves.

The deepest division in "Top Girls" isn't between intensely career-minded Marlene (Courtland Jones) and her estranged sister, the smart and energetic Joyce (Janelle Mills), who has elected to stay put in their native village and embrace a domestic life of child rearing. Nor is it between Marlene and the male colleagues she beat out for a coveted position at work. (In this instance, "work" is the aptly-named Top Girls Employment Agency, a bit of double-edged word play in which one edge is razor sharp and the other scathingly, tormentingly blunt; this is a play about a woman who specializes in keeping other women employed in menial "women's work" jobs.)

Those are fierce competitions, and they play out with heat, but there's a growing sense throughout that Marlene's main struggle is within herself -- which is one way of accounting for the play's opening scene, which takes place in a restaurant of the imagination, or perhaps as a metaphysical side-bar.

The dinner guests include not just Marlene, giddy with her success at work, but also a number of women, mythical as well as factual, who achieved notoriety. These include historical women such as the 13th century Japanese Imperial consort Lady Nijo (Maria Carreon) and Victorian-era world traveler Isabella Bird (Caroline Price), as well as fictional female characters such as "The Canterbury Tales' " Patient Griselda (Janelle Mills) and the Hell-bound warrior harridan from Flemish tales, Dull Gret (Catherine Buxton). Falling somewhere in between, probably based on a real person but also liable to some historic revision and distortion, is Pope Joan (Gillian Mackay-Smith), a character based on the female pope who was only found out when she gave birth. Particularly striking is that these fellow dinner celebrants are played by actors who recur later on in different roles, a la the cast of colorful characters Dorothy Gale encounters along her journey through Oz -- individuals drawn from people of Dorothy's acquaintance, transformed in her fever dream. What's also striking, and more than a little bleakly funny, is that these women of note are being served by a typically patient, put-upon waitress (Emma Walker). One can practically hear the wheels in Marlene's subconscious clacking away: Where does she fit into this pantheon of powerful female figures? If she's to be a "top girl" herself, what's the cost going to be -- to herself, and to others of her gender? Will her success rest upon definitions of merit drawn from the male, martial perspective?

One possible first impulse to this assemblage, in the context of what follows, is that Churchill had outlined her play using three sticky notes with headings like, "Women's Place History," "Women's Place in the Home," and "Women's Place in the Office." The three contexts, and the situations they speak to, don't always feel comfortably or naturally installed next to one another. But Churchill isn't a cabinetmaker; she's not going to sand and lacquer everything to seamless perfection, especially not when a few rough edges and oblique angles in the structure of her play will lend energy to her theses.

There are a number of humorous, illustrative asides that crop up; they could irritate, because they tend to pull the play away from anything resembling a linear course even as they navigate a certain roundness of characterization. But just when you start thinking that the play will amount to a framework filled out, beat by beat, with such episodes, the play veers into more obvious and blocky territory: A visit from her flighty niece Angie (Buxton) at the same moment as a visit from the demanding wife of a disappointed male colleague puts Marlene squarely at the crux of the feminist dilemma. Is she going to be a professional warrior in the corporate field of battle? Or is she going to be a nurturing maternal presence for a troubled youth? The play deliberately presses into still more overt territory with an extended flashback that reveals a twist you can anticipate long before it arrives. (Earlier, we spend a fair amount of time with Angie and her younger friend, Kit, as they engage in a juvenile version of the power plays that entangle the adults.)

If the play feels a little warped and asymmetrical, pushed out of shape for effect and pushed in your face for emphasis, the production itself is accomplished in a seemly and economic manner. Director Liz Fenstermaker allows even the surreal beginning to play out with naturalistic rhythms and shadings, and she maintains a consistency of tone even as the narrative structure rejects the staid and stable. Scenic designer Shelley Barish contrives a set that transforms into different environments with a few simple adjustments: An elegant restaurant becomes a modest home, and then an anodyne office environment. (The set is dotted with portraits of powerful women, and the canvases spill off to a side area where there's a mini-gallery: Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Jackie Kennedy, Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth I, and more are represented.)

Costume designer Bridgette Hayes might have the most fun of all, outfitting the cast with appropriate garb for the mundane and the fantastical alike. PJ Strachman handles the well-designed lighting scheme; Deirdre Benson provides a sound design that fills the production unobtrusively, but creates atmosphere.

These are women: You don't just hear them roar, you hear them bicker, battle, talk over each other, and (just about) grind their teeth. (Whether you grind yours will come down to a matter of personal taste.) You hear their hope and their confusion. They're not so very different from men, and yet Churchill (and Fenstermaker with her) puts a finger on what differences there are, and feels the pulse of deep, divided feelings -- some of them savagely suppressed.

"Top Girls" continues through April 27 at the Boston Center for the Arts, located at 527 Tremont Street in Boston.

For tickets and more information, please bostontheatrescene.com or phone 617-933-8600.