to the authority of men in their society more generally. With the second scene of Act I, Churchill dispenses with the time-warp conceit and shows Marlene at work, interviewing job applicant Jeanine, whose ideas of career ambition advancement are both unfocused and limited and who relies on Marlene's professionalism to guide her through the process of job hunting. The third scene switches to the back yard of Marlene's sister Joyce in Suffolk, where conversation between Joyce and her daughter Angie, a dull-witted and emotionally stunted 16-year-old whose best friend Kit is 12 and who suspects she is really Marlene's daughter, reveals the constricted domestic life they have, preoccupied as it is with cleaning rooms and going to the movies, as well as how limited is their conception of the future and the world as a whole. They discuss distant Aunty Marlene, who has been to America; Angie and Joyce have never even been to London, though Kit was there once. Act II, Scene 1 returns to the Agency, where two of Marlene's ambitious--and largely soulless--employees deal with job applicants. Complications begin when Angie arrives unexpectedly to see Marlene. "I just come here. I come to you" (II.i), she says, and expresses vague hopes of staying with Marlene and getting a job at Top Girls. Marlene can see that Angie isn't going to have much of a life. Compounding the surprise is a visit from Mrs. Kidd, the wife of the man who expected but did not get the executive position that Marlene is going to assume. Mrs. Kidd expresses her husband's outrage and betrayal and the misery of having his failure thrown in his face: "It's me that bears the brunt. . . You women this, you women that. It's not my fault" (II.i). By the end of the act Mr. Kidd has had a heart attack, and Marlene is confronting the fact that Angie is a loser. Act II, Scene 2 is a modified time warp, set at Joyce's a year before Marlene's promotion, during one of Marlene's rare visits. The...