CARYL Churchill's Top Girls was voted number 16 in a recent poll of the best plays of the past 100 years. I must confess I'd never heard of it before reading rave reviews of the Oxford Stage Company's excellent touring revival but - having seen it - I am now wiser but hard-pressed to easily describe it.

Premiered in 1982, it is in some ways a period piece, rooted as it is in anger at what it sees as unfettered capitalism and careerism and its effects both on the careerists and the less fortunate.

The opening is bewildering. Marlene, a go-getting businesswoman, is celebrating her promotion to MD of an employment agency with a meal at a restaurant with historical and literary female figures including a female pope, a 13th century Japanese emperor's courtesan and a Victorian traveller.

Themes including the conflict between personal ambition and emotional independence, the pain of motherhood and the loss of children, emerge.

Two further acts follow: in the second, the action transfers to the agency where the tone is largely comic before in Act III, the action shifts to East Anglia and Marlene's sister's house.

Here we see the other side of the Thatcherite revolution as single mum Joyce struggles to bring-up the retarded 16-year-old daughter Marlene has left behind in her pursuit of success.

Themes weave in and out as the play shifts mood and pace. This is above all a very adroit and intriguing play, cunningly constructed and beautifully played. PW