PASADENA, CA -- Subscriptions are now on sale for Pasadena Shakespeare Company's 1999 season.

The first production of the year will be Othello, Shakespeare's tale of jealousy, betrayal and revenge. It will be directed by Ron Martel Mangravite, who has worked at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, Detroit's Attic Theatre and at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

April and May 1999 will see the production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by PSC associate artistic director David Paul Needles.

In June and July artistic director Gillian Bagwell will mount the West Coast premiere of Stephen Jeffrey's The Libertine, a dark comedy about John Wilmot, the Second Early of Rochester, the rake, poet, lover and tortured genius whose scandalous antics shocked even the decadent Restoration court of Charles II.

In August and September 1999 PSC will serve up Pearls and Marlowe, based on Raymond Chandler's stories "Goldfish" and "Red Wind." Adapted by Robert G. Egan, the "theatre noir" piece will be directed by Dana Marley. The '99 season will conclude with Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, which features everyone's favorite rogue, Falstaff. Jane Macfie and Patrick Lawlor are the co- directors.

PSC is located in suite 296 of the Plaza Pasadena Mall at 300 E. Colorado Blvd. Call (626) 564-8564.

-- By Willard Manus
Southern California Correspondent