PASADENA, CA -- Pasadena Shakespeare Company opens its 1999 season by giving audiences Moor for their money. The first production of the year is Othello, Shakespeare's tale of jealousy, betrayal and revenge.

Director Scott Rabinowitz (replacing previously announced Ron Martel Mangravite) is former co-artistic director of the Sacred Fools Company. Other Shakespeare tragedies include Macbeth, Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet.

Previews for Othello begin Feb. 26 for an opening March 5 and a run through April 4.

Upcoming at PSC, April and May 1999 will see the production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by 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
and David Lefkowitz