![\"Notes](\"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/NotesFromArdenHead.jpg\")
<\/p>\nBY STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
BY STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Has NoHo turned into the West Village? <\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n True story: Last Sunday afternoon, as we’re coming from a coffee with Theatre Unleashed producer Gregory Crafts<\/b> at Republic of Pie, we duck into Eclectic Caf\u00e9 on Lankershim aiming to get some pre-dinner-rush-hour writing time on our computer before heading downtown on the Red Line.\u00a0 There at a table sit Stage and Cinema<\/i> editor Tony Frankel<\/b>, his partner, and actress Rhonda Aldrich<\/b>, whom they\u2019d just seen in Antaeus Company\u2019s production of Caryl Churchill\u2019s Top Girls. <\/i>Frankel lauds its quality, and our laptop remains in its case. We hobnob for an hour.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After going our separate ways, Stage Raw<\/em> heads down the North Hollywood subway station staircase when, coming up the other side with bike hoisted over his shoulder, we see the perspiring Lovell Estell III<\/b>, on his way to Brett Neveu\u2019s Detective Partner Hero Villain <\/i>at NoHo Actors’ Studio.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At the bottom of the stairwell, the Red Line train sits ready to depart in three minutes. We race onto the nearest car, where Variety<\/i>\u2019s L.A. theater critic Bob Verini<\/b> is sitting, reading, taking the train to The Tallest Tree in the Forest<\/i> at the Taper. We get to talking \u2013 about what you may ask?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Well, as result of whatever it was, Verini\u2019s first review for Stage Raw<\/i> \u2013 Porgy and Bess<\/i> at the Ahmanson — will appear next week.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That seems like a lot of theater people to crash into, randomly, on a Sunday afternoon in NoHo. They say cars isolate people. Take away the cars, and you get what starts to look like a village \u2013 not to mention, need it be said?\u00a0 \u2013 a theater town.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lions and Tigers and Politics on Stage! (And in a Gallery)<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Caryl Churchill\u2019s Top Girls<\/i> takes feminist politics, spins it through a wash-cycle of about nine centuries via a historical fantasia including the mythical eleventh century Pope Joan (an allegedly female Pope who walked around in men\u2019s attire), painter Pieter Breughel\u2019s Dull Grette, \u00a0Chaucer\u2019s Patient Griselda and an array of 20th<\/sup> century women, including the protagonist Marlene, who\u2019s throwing a bash at which all the historical figures appear, in order to celebrate her promotion at the employment agency where she works. The play goes on to examine Marlene\u2019s vaulting ambition, and the costs to her humanity of entering the male cosmos.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s now 32 years since Top Girls <\/i>first appeared at London\u2019s Royal Court Theatre. Who\u2019d have thought that Marlene would be racing towards a new century with continuing income inequality between the genders, not to mention an even more nagging bias towards male playwrights in the presentation of their works in professional theaters, and towards male visual artists, in the presentation of their works in the world\u2019s top galleries.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Pauline Adamek<\/b>\u2019s feature<\/a> this week looks at an exhibition of posters (just extended to May 9) at ForYourArt gallery on Wilshire Boulevard in the Fairfax District. (en)Gender (in) Equity<\/i> is directed at the chilling statistics on gender inequity at top galleries in L.A. and New York.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"North](\"https:\/\/stageraw.com\/oldStageRaw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/North_Hollywood_station_LA_Metro.jpg\")
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n