Erik Stein News

What did our critic think of CINDERELLA at PCPA's Marian Theater?

PCPA has announced the return of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella. The new Broadway adaption of the classical musical will enchant families this holiday season from November 10th through December 23rd  at the Marian Theatre. 

PCPA’s production of Into the Woods comes to the Festival Theater Solvang on August 11th through September 4th, 2022. 

PCPA's production of Into the Woods comes to the Marian Theatre April 28th through May 15th. 

The Secret Garden, PCPA's enchanting holiday musical, will delight the whole family with its hopeful, heartfelt story of love, loss, and regeneration.

Pacific Conservatory Theatre will return to live performances this summer with two upcoming productions. The first is Together, A Musical Journey, running July 21 through August 8. This will be followed by Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, which will run August 19 through September 5.

PCPA brings back InterPlay readings from February 26 through March 20 - with four new plays, each being read twice over the course of four weekends. The readings are all live streamed via Zoom. The series includes The Mountaintop, Into the Breeches!, Two Degrees, and Fade. Performances are 7pm Fridays and 1:30pm on Saturdays. $10 per viewer or $40 for all four.

Actors Training Ground is offering two great Professional Development classes in February. Classes run 6 weeks long and meet once a week for an hour and a half. Build your skills and take charge of your acting career with Voice-Over with Wendy Zier and Acting as a Business.

Winners have been announced for the 2020 BroadwayWorld Santa Barbara Awards - which were back bigger than ever, celebrating the best in local theatre of the past decade! 

PCPA is expanding its free virtual programming summer sessions of PCPA Plays On! for youth and adults; programs that are educational, engaging, fun, and theatre focused.

While PCPA's stages are dark for the summer, due to the continuing health threat of COVID-19 and restrictions on public gatherings, PCPA Plays On!

PCPA closes its season with one of the sharpest, funniest, cleverest comedies written in the English language--Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. Fans of this Victorian confection of drawing-room comedy will not be disappointed. A beautiful set, designed by Jason Bolen, and sumptuous Victorian costuming, designed by Sara Curran Ice, transport us to a fashionable London flat and a smart country mansion.

Before the first line of PCPA's The Addams Family had left the mouth of Gomez Addams (George Walker), my seatmate was already chuckling. And the laughs kept coming until the players took their bows to a standing audience. The cast's comic timing synchronized perfectly with Erik Stein's fluid staging for a frightfully fun evening.

A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, which took the 2014 Tony Awards by storm with 10 nominations - winning four, including Best Musical, will play in the Marian Theatre April 25 through May 12 and in the Solvang Festival Theater June 13 - 30.

PCPA's current production, Shakespeare in Love, imagines Will Shakespeare's (Yusef Seevers) madcap adventures in London early in his career. Because historians truly do not know much about the personal life of the greatest writer of the English language, his life is a blank page upon which almost anything may be written. In this play, Shakespeare falls in love (at first sight) with Viola de Lesseps (Emily Trask). And, for our amusement, the course of true love does not run smooth.

A musical comedy set to the ebullient music of Swedish pop group, Abba, Mamma Mia! takes audiences on a toe-tapping journey to a wedding on a small island near Greece.

PCPA's production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame - A New Musical, now on stage in Solvang's Festival Theater, delights audiences with its overtly theatrical storytelling style. If you are only familiar with the Disney film based on Victor Hugo's epic novel, this Hunchback includes new music, deeper characterizations, and plot elements to suit the taste of today's theater audiences.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame A sweeping score and powerful story make The Hunchback of Notre Dame a truly unforgettable musical and an instant classic. It plays in the Marian Theatre April 26 - May 13 then June 14 - July 8 in the Solvang Festival Theatre.

Be afraid, be very afraid. In Miller's searing masterpiece, an invisible enemy unleashes a dangerous hysteria. As Artistic Director Mark Booher observed, From time to time, we human beings have periods of moral panic that overtakes us. The Crucible is one such timeless telling. While focused on literal witch hunts, it is also an allegory for any number of misguided crusades through the ages, including ominous opinions against select groups of people in our current state of the world.

Launching PCPA's 54th season on November 9, and playing through December 23, in the Marian Theatre is the new Disney musical Freaky Friday.