Churchill's Top Girls Among Four Plays on Tap at MTC

The Broadway premiere of Caryl Churchill's popular 1980s play Top Girls is among four shows announced for the 2007-2008 season at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Specific production dates, casting and the remaining three productions of the seven-play season will all be announced at a later date. The four plays currently on tap are as follows:

Mauritius, by Theresa Rebeck, at Broadway's Biltmore Theatre
This gripping new play from the author of such plays as The Scene, The Water's Edge, Bad Dates and Omnium Gatherum for which she and her co-author earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination will have its New York premiere, co-produced with the Huntington Theatre Company. Jackie and Mary are half-sisters whose mother's death leaves them in possession of a rare stamp collection. But which sister actually owns the stamps? Which of three dealers can be trusted with their sale? And where do we choose to live: the present or the past? This sinister comedy marks Rebeck's Broadway debut.

Top Girls, by Caryl Churchill, at Broadway's Biltmore Theatre
Churchill's 1980s materpiece gets a Broadway debut production. Set at the Top Girls Employment Agency in London in the early 1980s, this groundbreaking play tells the story of Marlene, an ambitious career woman who has just been appointed head of the firm. But as she celebrates her achievements, can we applaud her values? This bold and ingenious work from the singularly talented author of Far Away and Cloud Nine offers one of the theater's most honest portraits of what it means to be a woman in the modern world. Director James Macdonald staged the New York premiere of Churchill's A Number, as well as this season's production of Dying City at Lincoln Center Theater. Top Girls was produced at the Public Theater in 1982.

The Receptionist, by Adam Bock, at New York City Center
This world premiere production by the author of The Thugs and Swimming in the Shallows will be directed by Tony Award winner Joe Mantello and star Jayne Houdyshell, a Tony nominee for Well who went on to appear in Wicked. Beverly takes pride in her work as the receptionist at a busy Northeast office. Whether coaching her co-worker Lorraine through romantic troubles, fielding calls for their boss Mr. Raymond or carefully monitoring the flow of office supplies, Beverly keeps her domain shipshape. But when handsome Mr. Dart arrives unexpectedly from the central office, Beverly is charmed, Lorraine is smitten and Mr. Raymond is caught completely off guard.

Pumpgirl, by Abbie Spallen, at New York City Center
In the American premiere of a gripping play from one of Ireland's brightest new talents, Spallen shapes a startling tale of three lives colliding in rural Ireland. The play unfolds with the story of a homely, tomboyish pump girl at a rundown gas station. When a local racetrack star becomes the focus of her obsession, the affair threatens more than the feelings of his disenchanted wife. A success last season in Edinburgh and at London's renowned Bush Theatre, the play is in the best tradition of Irish storytelling.