Theatre Saturday

We have an annual subscription to the Melbourne Theatre Company, which means that Smuts and I go to eight plays over the course of the year. We like to go to a Saturday performance at 4 pm. This is the Southbank Theatre, at about 3.45 pm. The theatre is on the south bank of the Yarra River, hence the name! The Melbourne Recital Centre is next to it (second photo).

Yesterday we saw a play called called Top Girls, by a British playwright. This is the promotional blurb:

Marlene is out to celebrate her big promotion at work. And she’s earned it. It’s a just reward for years of dedicated service and hard work at the Top Girls Employment Agency. Nobody knows better than Marlene that today’s career woman has to be tough as nails to compete in the masculine corporate world. And if she’s had to make sacrifices along the way, then they’ve all been worth it.

Dancing through history, Caryl Churchill’s timeless masterpiece Top Girls asks all the difficult questions about women, career and corporate culture. 

As you can see from the poster, the 'dancing through history' refers to a range of characters from across the centuries. In the first act, women characters from history tell their stories in a kind of girls' get-together. There's medieval patient Griselda, a Japanese courtesan from 14th century Japan, a woman pope from the 16th century (no one knew she was a woman until she had a baby), a Scottish explorer from the Victorian era, and a brutish woman German soldier from the 15th century. No actual dancing, by the way.

During interval we like to have our craft beer (Smuts) and sparkling wine (me). You can see in this photo that we're inside the building with the white pipes! In the background you can see the Eureka Tower, the tallest building in Melbourne.

And here is the Southbank Theatre at about 6.30 pm, after the play. I love the white pipes when they are all lit up. It looks fabulous at night.