Ellen Crawford, Stan Egi & More to Star in Pasadena Playhouse's PYGMALION

The Pasadena Playhouse (Artistic Director Sheldon Epps and Executive Director Elizabeth Doran) announces the cast of George Bernard Shaw's PYGMALION, the fifth production of its 2014-2015 Season. PYGMALION, which began rehearsals today, will perform March 17 - April 12, 2015 with the official press night on Sunday, March 22, 2015.

Directed by Jessica Kubzansky (Theresa Rebeck's Mauritius at The Pasadena Playhouse), the cast of PYGMALION features Ellen Crawford (Broadway: Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? Off Broadway: The Misunderstanding, A Touch Of The Poet, NBC's "E.R.") as Mrs. Pearce, Stan Egi (Broadway: Anything Goes, Off Broadway credits include The Public Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons) as Colonel Pickering, Alex Knox (Antaeus' Macbeth d. Jessica Kubzansky, South Coast Rep's Euridyce) as Freddy, Mary Anne McGarry (AMC's "Mad Men", TNT's "Major Crimes") as Mrs. Higgins, Lynn Milgrim (Broadway: Bedroom Farce, Otherwise Engaged, international tour of Brighton Beach Memoirs, Trip to Bountiful and many more at South Coast Rep) as Mrs. Eynsford-Hill, Carolyn Ratteray (Off Broadway's Hecuba and The Cherry Orchard) as Clara Eynsford-Hill, Tom Shelton (eleven seasons with L.A.'s Hillside Repertory, In The Next Room, Italian Straw Hat and many more at South Coast Rep) as Ensemble, Bruce Turk (Broadway's The Green Bird and Juan Darién as well as six seasons at San Diego's Old Globe) as Henry Higgins, Greg Watanabe (Off Broadway's Golden Child, HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm") as Ensemble, LA Drama Critic's Award winner Paige Lindsey White (Trying (International City Theatre), Other Desert Cities(Arizona Theatre Company and Indiana Repertory Theatre, Jessica Kubzansky's R II(Boston Court) as Eliza Doolittle and Time Winters (Broadway's Amadeus, Yes, Prime Minister (Geffen Playhouse) as Alfred Doolittle.

Sheldon Epps, Artistic Director of The Pasadena Playhouse says, "Shaw is a wonderful, but demanding playwright. In order to be successful in his plays actors must have tremendous dexterity with language, fierce intelligence, wit, and a passion to explore and elucidate challenging ideas. Jessica has brought together a cast that displays all of those qualities and we are fortunate to have them at the service of Mr. Shaw and his brilliant and dazzling play."

PYGMALION Director Jessica Kubzansky says, "I am so blessed to have this truly stunning cast with which to make this production sing. They are passionate, fierce theatre artists with great craft and amazing humor and depth. I know they will make the play vivid and kinetic and alive. I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to direct this witty and brilliantly profound piece of theatre. George Bernard Shaw was really in some ways a feminist before that idea had made its way into the zeitgeist, and he is playing with such genius questions about whether or not transformation is as simple as giving someone new language, and whether or not transformation is liberation, or simply exchanging one cage for another."

PYGMALION remains Shaw's most popular play, which is most widely known for being the inspiration behind the highly romanticized Broadway musical and film My Fair Lady. In this delicious and gritty interpretation of PYGMALION, phonetics professor Henry Higgins bets that after he finishes transforming Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, her flawless speech and delicate facade will allow her to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. Centering on language as a defining characteristic, social satire about class barriers and the stifling of female independence, PYGMALION manages to be both playful and heartbreaking with a narrative whose relevance to our world today is as profound as ever.

The Pasadena Playhouse is located at 39 South El Molino Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101. The performance schedule is Tuesday through Friday at 8:00 p.m.; Saturday at 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.; and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Tickets, priced from $30.00 to $75.00, plus premium seats at $125.00, are available online at PasadenaPlayhouse.org; by calling The Pasadena Playhouse at 626-356-7529; or visiting The Pasadena Playhouse Box Office, Tuesday - Sunday from 1:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m. during non-performance dates. On performance dates the Box Office is open Tuesday - Saturday from 1:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. on Sunday. For more information, visit PasadenaPlayhouse.org.

Jessica Kubzansky (Director) last directed the West Coast Premiere of Theresa Rebeck's Mauritius at The Pasadena Playhouse. She has been the Co-Artistic Director of The Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena since its inception. Her most recent productions there were the world premiere of Sheila Callaghan's Everything You Touch, and RII, her own three-person adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard II. She is also an award-winning director working nationally in a wide variety of venues such as Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, the Cherry Lane, South Coast Rep, Pasadena Playhouse, The Geffen Playhouse, Portland Center Stage, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, Silk Road, The Aurora, The Publick, La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, The Laguna Playhouse, Antaeus, ICT, The Colony, East/West Players, A Noise Within, Theater 150, 24th Street, EST-LA, Playwrights' Arena, and more. She has also directed numerous productions, which have toured both nationally and internationally. Kubzansky does a great deal of new work development, and has had the privilege of developing work by an amazing group of playwrights, including Luis Alfaro, Bill Cain, Sheila Callaghan, Julia Cho, Jordan Harrison, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Zayd Dohrn, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, David Wiener, Ken Urban, Christina Anderson, Carlos Murillo, Laura Schellhardt, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Diana Son, Nick Salamone, and many other wonderful writers in many new play development settings, including Ojai Playwrights Conference, Portland Center Stage JAW Festival, South Coast Rep's Pacific Playwrights Festival and NewSCRipts, the Playwrights Center of Minneapolis, the Taper Labs, and many others. Kubzansky has received numerous awards and honors, among them the Los Angeles' Drama Critics' Circle's Margaret Harford Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatre. Proud member of SDC.

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