Just before it closed, I caught Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of “Top Girls,” by British playwright Caryl Churchill. I’d read several favorable or semi-favorable articles and reviews of the play, but it wasn’t until WNYC’s Leonard Lopate interviewed Martha Plimpton about her experience playing Pope Joan and Angie that I was persuaded to buy a ticket (a big investment these days) and check it out for myself.

Plimpton is a wonderful actress. As a devout “Law & Order” fan, I caught her 2006 Emmy-nominated portrayal of a desperately brilliant young woman who fails to capture the love of her even more brilliant, murder-investigating father. I’ve seen re-runs of the “Criminal Intent” episode many times and I still get caught up in Plimpton’s character.

The other actresses in “Top Girls” are also top drawer. There’s Mary Beth Hurt and Marisa Tomei—each playing multiple characters—as well as several lesser-known actresses (to me) who hold down multiple roles of their own. Elizabeth Marvel plays Marlene, the tough, Margaret Thatcher-era central character (the play was written in the early ’80s).

“Top Girls” opens on Scene 1, a dinner gathering of remarkable women plucked from myth, literature and history. Though separated in “real life,” Caryl Churchill imagines them as friends who come to celebrate Marlene’s recent job promotion.

Elizabeth Marvel plays Marlene as a shallow person whose only focus is rising through the ranks to achieve “success.” Marlene isn’t capable of empathizing with others or of reflecting on her life and behavior — unless plied with liquor. I think the playwright wants us to believe Marlenes’ truncated personality is a consequence of competing in the hard scrabble, Reagan/Thatcher-era business world.

But I attribute Marlene’s one-dimensionality to nothing more than her own character — or lack thereof. That becomes a major problem as the play moves forward because the storyline seems predicated on audience sympathy for the personal sacrifices Marlene has made to advance her career: breaking faith with her sister, Joyce (played beautifully by Marisa Thomei) and negating the biological connection with her now teenage daughter, Angie (played by Martha Plimpton), who’s been raised as Joyce’s daughter. If that weren’t enough, Marlene has divested herself of her working class roots in favor of an upwardly mobile, professional persona. She’s all cigarettes and sharp angles.

But I digress… Let’s go back to the first scene of “Top Girls,” in the restaurant, with our mythical-literary-historical characters all gathered ’round a long table to celebrate Marlene’s promotion. Here’s the good news: Martha Plimpton plays Pope Joan fully in the round, as an earthy, theological heavy-hitter with a wicked sense of humor. The bad news: Plimpton’s performance overshadows the rest of the cast (an imbalance I attribute to James Macdonald’s poor direction rather than to Plimpton’s spot-on character rendering).

Marisa Tomei plays the fearless Isabella Bird, an irritatingly upbeat 19th century author and adventurer. Jennifer Ikeda plays Lady Nijo, an historical figure who was consort to the Emperor of Japan until her expulsion from court. She regales the table with her loves, losses and travails within the tight constrictions of 13th century Japanese society. We learn that Mary Catherine Garrison’s Patient Griselda (a character who first appeared in Chaucer’s “Clerks Tale”) got her distinctive moniker for accepting—without question—the kidnapping and apparent killing of her children by a titled husband who enjoyed testing his wife’s unwavering devotion…. Uh, pass the dinner rolls.

As the dinner progresses and the drinks flow, conversation becomes more animated. It’s at this point that the one character who has hardly spoken at all finally stands up and holds forth. Dull Gret is played by Ana Reeder (who also plays Angie’s young friend, Nell, brilliantly, in subsequent scenes). Dull Gret, the focal point of Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting, Dulle Griet (and a character of Flemish folklore, as I later learned) had arrived earlier at table in full Medieval fighting gear, including sword, breast plate and helmet. In Brueghel the Elder’s painting of her, she leads the townspeople in battle against a nasty bunch of farting “little devils.”  With the exception of Pope Joan’s dialog, Gret’s speech (you can’t really call it dialog) contains some of the best writing in the first act.

So here they are… these remarkable women, together, eating and drinking and toasting Marlene’s promotion…which brings me to the next of several problems I had with this production.

First, I hardly noticed Marlene during the dinner conversation. With the exception of the waitress (played by Mary Beth Hurt), Marlene seems a minor character and her promotion just a vehicle for the development of the other characters. Imagine my surprise when the play’s subsequent acts focus on Marlene’s personal complications and professional life!

Second, with the exception of Martha Plimpton, the characters at the Scene 1’s dinner table are nearly unintelligible. With the deliberate overlapping of voices, I could grasp only bits of the characters’ dialogs/monologues, and then only after a long period of adjustment to the additional burden of aggressively-rendered regional and cultural language peculiarities. Tomei’s Isabella Bird was the worst. Her character sounded very authentic but I couldn’t understand a word she said. What’s the point of an accurate accent if you can’t comprehend the words spoken?

(Perhaps the women’s voices were meant to be heard as musical instruments are, in concert. If that was the intention, it failed. The competing voices nearly canceled each other out, which irritated the hell out of me.)

A couple of the actresses couldn’t make themselves heard at all. Lady Nijo and Patient Griselda were especially difficult to follow. Dull Gret, a blunt instrument in the language department, was hard to understand as well. When I joined the long line to the ladies’ bathroom during the first intermission all I heard was, “Did you understand that?” “What were they saying?” “What did she say?”

The worst problem? “Top Girls” feels dated, even parochial. It’s back there in the 1980s with the big shoulder pads and designer man-suits. I don’t believe Churchill’s feminist concerns could be framed in the same way today. In the 21st century, feminism has become more nuanced and more contentious, more sensual and more confusing in its perspectives on womanhood. The predominantly Western, white and (some would say) privileged roots of Second Wave feminism (circa 1960s- late 1970s) has since been challenged mightily by women of every political stripe, race, religion and class; and by every culturally-specific community with its own perspective on what constitutes the full expression of womanhood. This has been both a boon and a burden for Third Wave feminism.

The feminist concerns of the 1980’s have not disappeared. Prejudices against women in the workplace continues. We need look no further than the news coverage of Hillary Clinton’s campaign to see that. The violations and transgressions against women have not vanished. Women continue to be ridiculed, humiliated, owned, forcibly married, sold into slavery, raped, mutilated and murdered in countries around the world.

What has changed is this: Women have been stirred in the remotest regions and in the most totalitarian states on earth. They choose their battles and exert their influence within the context of their culture and country. Instead of asking, “How do I get to the top of a man’s world,” they ask, “How do I raise myself and my community out of poverty?” “How do I bring supportive health care to the pregnant women in my village?” “What can I bring, as a woman, to the religious and political conflicts in my region?”

Perhaps feminism has become “feminisms.” In which case, I could be wrong about Churchill’s play. Maybe it’s not dated at all. Maybe it is prescient. That said, if “Top Girls” were written today, Marlene’s shallowness would be seen for what it is—a myopic self-involvement that truncates her humanity, and thus her womanhood.