"Top Girls" on Broadway

When British playwright Caryl Churchill wrote Top Girls in 1982, during the age of Thatcherism and Reaganomics, I expect she must have known that the themes of her play would remain painfully relevant even into the next century. Manhattan Theatre Club's timely revival of Churchill's play comes just as former first lady Hillary Clinton winds down her epic attempt at becoming the first top girl in U.S. history, and it provides a complex and intelligent companion to the debate over the lingering sexism in society today. How much is it important that the leaders of tomorrow be women, the play asks, if those in question don't have women's best interests at heart? Can women be both happy and successful? And should they have to don pants and act like men to get where they want to be?

Read my review of Caryl Churchill's Top Girls on Broadway at musicOMH.com. 

Mark Ravenhill and "Boris Godunov"

Mark Ravenhill has certainly come a long way in the eleven years it's taken him to get from his first play, Shopping and Fucking, to his epic cycle, Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat. In regards to the In-Yer-Face school into which he was siphoned - along with Sarah Kane, amongst others - early in his career, he denies any formal sense of a group at the time and replies, elusively, "I think it was kind of in the air everywhere." But he's never been out to shock. "With each play," he says, "you hope to surprise yourself and explore new stuff, and you're trying to listen to what's happening in the world and trying to put that in your play, and obviously the world doesn't stand still, so it constantly evolves."

Read my interview with in-yer-face playwright Mark Ravenhill at musicOMH.com, where I'm now a contributing writer.

I've also got a review of the recent Cheek by Jowl production of Alexander Pushkin's Boris Godunov at the Barbican up there.

Enjoy!