Top Girls

Nearly 3 decades since he directed its premiere, Max Stafford-Clark successfully revisits Caryl Churchill’s seminal and unconventionally structured play in which Suranne Jones’ career orientated Marlene hosts a surreal dinner party for half a dozen historical women (including a Victorian traveller, a 13th century Japanese concubine turned nun, and a female Pope) all of whom paid a price in a man’s world.

More realistically, we then see her at the employment agency where her tough Thatcherite creed and shoulder pads have propelled her to the top.

And finally, in a confrontation with the sister (Stella Gonet’s disgruntled Joyce) left behind in rural Suffolk to pick up the domestic pieces and raise a backward child, Churchill makes it clear that for many, the power-obsessed 80’s still held little prospect of fulfilment.

Trafalgar Studios 1, Whitehall, SW1A 2DY(0844 871 7632) Tube: Charing Cross ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios Until October 29 (£35- £45)