[photo credit: Pasadena Playhouse]
The Los Angeles Times’ Charles McNulty called the production “the best local staging of a musical I’ve seen in my 20 years covering the scene for The Times,” according to a quote featured on the Playhouse’s website. BroadwayWorld called it “an absolute triumph.” Stage and Cinema wrote that it is “the first regional production in years that justifies the expense and ambition of reviving a large-scale Golden Age musical.” The production opened to the press on May 17.
The production, which runs through June 14, features a cast led by Tony Award nominee Max von Essen as Tommy Albright, a man adrift from a loveless engagement who wanders into a village that appears for one day every hundred years and falls for one of its residents. Betsy Morgan, whose original Broadway casts include Kimberly Akimbo and The King and I, plays Fiona MacLaren. Tony Award and six-time Emmy Award winner Tyne Daly plays Widow Lundie, a role reimagined from the original show’s Mr. Lundie. Happy Anderson plays Jeff Douglas and Daniel Yearwood plays Charlie Dalrymple.
Alexandra Silber, an actress and author making her first professional book-writing credit, wrote the new adaptation. She and director-choreographer Katie Spelman — who made her Broadway choreographic debut with The Notebook — are the first female duo to formally revisit the show together, according to TheaterMania. They have updated the two American protagonists into present-day characters, aged them into their 40s and 50s, and grounded the Scottish village in more authentic history and ritual.
Spelman told TheaterMania that setting the story in 2026 sharpens rather than softens the musical’s central question. “We are arguably the most connected we’ve ever been as a world, yet you’re seeing all these stats about how isolated and lonely people are,” she said. “Watching these avatars of ours step into a place with no technology, and yet, so much more connection, life, and breath, it points to the humanity that is necessary for us all to live and survive.”
The production places a live orchestra on stage, a decision reviewers have singled out for the way it amplifies a score that includes the Broadway standards “Almost Like Being in Love” and “The Heather on the Hill.” The scenic design is by two-time Emmy Award winner Jason Sherwood, with costumes by Raquel Adorno and lighting by Jaymi Smith.
The staging is part of the Playhouse’s American Musical Project, an initiative to keep large-scale Golden Age musicals alive in regional theater at a time when rising costs have made them increasingly rare. Producing Artistic Director Danny Feldman has said the Playhouse will continue to raise the funds needed to produce shows “that are so important to American culture,” according to American Theatre magazine.
The Playhouse, founded in 1917 and designated the State Theater of California by the legislature in 1937, received the 2023 Regional Theatre Tony Award.
Performances run Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Thursdays at 7 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. through June 14 at Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena, CA 91101. Tickets start at $44 and are available at pasadenaplayhouse.org or by calling (626) 356-7529. Pay What You Can tickets for select performances start at $10. A childcare matinee is scheduled for Saturday, June 6 at 2 p.m., with childcare at $35 per child. An open-captioned and audio-described performance is scheduled for Sunday, May 31 at 2 p.m. Parking is available in the garage across from the theater; the Playhouse does not validate. The show runs approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes with a 15-minute intermission. A content advisory notes the portrayal of suicide and theatrical haze.
A village that vanishes for a century. A score that has endured for nearly eight decades. At the Playhouse, both have reappeared at the same time.
Brigadoon — Pasadena Playhouse | May 13 — June 14 |Where: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena Tickets: pasadenaplayhouse.org | Box Office: (626) 356-7529 Link: https://www.pasadenaplayhouse.org/tickets-events/
