Churchill’s Top Girls Transfers to Trafalgar, 5 Aug

Max Stafford-Clark’s Chichester Festival revival of Caryl Churchill’s seminal feminist play Top Girls will transfer to the West End’s Trafalgar Studios 1 for a limited season from 16 August to 15 October 2011 (previews from 5 August), following its current run at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre, where it opened on 30 June (previews from 23 June) and finishes this Saturday 16 July. London tickets for Top Girls are now on sale.

A co-production with Out of Joint, Top Girls is helmed by the company’s artistic director Max Stafford Clark, who returns to the play after directing its 1982 world premiere at the Royal Court, which he ran from 1979 to 1993.

Top Girls is a study of powerful women in Thatcher’s Britain. Hard-nosed businesswoman Marlene hosts a dinner party to celebrate her promotion to managing director of the Top Girls Employment Agency with a guest list including powerful women from myth and history.

The Chichester cast, who will accompany the production’s transfer, comprises Suranne Jones (as Marlene), Catherine McCormack, Stella Gonet, Lucy Briers, Olivia Poulet, Laura Elphinstone and Lisa Kerr.

The production is designed by Tim Shortall, with lighting by Jason Taylor, sound by Ian Dickinson and video design by Finn Ross. The West End transfer is presented by Sonia Friedman Productions. Friedman, now one of the West End and Broadway’s leading producers, co-founded Out of Joint with Stafford-Clark in 1993.

Top Girls is the second Out of Joint production announced for a West End season in the coming months. A Dish of Tea With Dr Johnson, also directed by Stafford-Clark and with a cast including Trudie Styler, will run at the Arts Theatre from 1 to 24 September 2011.

Caryl Churchill’s many other plays include Cloud Nine, Serious Money, Far Away, Fen, Blue Heart and A Number. Top Girls was last seen in the West End in 2001 in a production directed by Thea Sharrock for Oxford Stage Company (now Headlong).