Sheldon Epps, artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse, has announced the revised schedule for the company's 2000 Winter-Spring season. Things will kick off in January with the West Coast premiere of The Kiss at City Hall by Joe DiPietro, followed in March by the world premiere of a new musical The People vs. Mona, from the creator of Pump Boys and Dinettes. The season will conclude in May with a revival of Tennessee Williams' classic drama The Glass Menagerie.

DiPietro, the author of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, has fashioned a comedy based on the famed 1950 photograph of a young Parisian couple embracing passionately in public. Did their love last or did it fade with time? Was the kiss real or staged? DiPietro answers these questions through his lead characters, two young American couples struggling to keep love and marriage alive in the 90's.

The People vs. Mona looks at the trial of a singer, Mona Mae Katt, accused of killing her record-producer husband by bashing him over the head with a guitar a few hours after they were married. The writers Jim Wann, Ernest Chambers and Patricia Miller have treated this material satirically, and have come up with a musical that is said to be a cross between a romantic comedy and a courtroom thriller.

The Glass Menagerie will run May 6-June 18, 2000.

The Pasadena Playhouse's recent box-office hit, Play On!, a musical based on Duke Ellington's music, has been taped in front of a live audience by PBS' "The Great Performances" series and will be televised nationally next spring. The show, conceived and directed by Epps, sold out over the course of its six-week run, becoming the hottest ticket in town. The show was co-produced by the Arizona Theatre Company. The Pasadena Playhouse is located at 39 S. El Molino Ave. For tickets and information call (626) 356- 7529.

-- By Willard Manus
Southern California Correspondent