Los Angeles Times - Not Recommended
"...Traditions are meant to be reinvented, but a revival that is more interested in creating indoor fog effects than in uniting its cast can't help but founder. McGarry's Mrs. Higgins, though a touch wan, might have served as the model for the rest of the company in balancing humor with seriousness. Turk, an adroit actor who could use some reining in, overdoes the farcical qualities of Higgins, an enigmatic character whose Oedipally challenged psychology is under-investigated here. The tears he sheds at the end of the production are not only unearned but also contrary to Shaw's intentions, which to his everlasting credit were neither sentimental nor devoid of feeling."
LA Weekly - Somewhat Recommended
"...They come through crisply in the Pasadena Playhouse's production, directed by Jessica Kubzansky with a post-modern design by Stephanie Kerley Schwartz that shakes off the stodgy visual trappings of the play's Edwardian setting. But this attempt to distill the play to its crystalline elements doesn't wholly succeed. Despite a luminous performance from Paige Lindsey White, the production as a whole somehow adds up to less than the sum of its considerable parts."
Glendale News Press - Somewhat Recommended
"...In the end, Kubzansky honors Shaw's door-closed finality for marriage between Henry and Eliza, but in Higgins' reaction to that finality, she inserts her production's most divergent, un-Shaw-like touch. Awkwardly realized in Turk's performance, this strips away any possibility of perceived ambiguity, yet spells out an awareness of loss at odds with the playwright's intent."
Stage Scene LA - Recommended
"...Witty comedy, incisive social commentary, unconventional love story, and the inspiration for what many consider the greatest Broadway musical ever-George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion is all this and (as revived for a 21st-century audience at the Pasadena Playhouse) much, much more."
StageHappenings.com - Recommended
"...So, the Pasadena Playhouse has mounted a sumptuous revival, directed with delicate insight by Jessica Kubzansky, with a mostly superb cast, capable of handling Shaw's expressive dialogue in impeccable accents. It's a joy to relax and watch capable actors make sense of this century-old weighted comedy."
ReviewPlays.com - Somewhat Recommended
"...The production at The Pasadena Playhouse is directed by Jessica Kubzansky. I sometimes felt that Bruce Turk overdid his personality and attitude towards Eliza, so much so that I really did not care for him as a person, but I did enjoy the outcome of the play. Perhaps that was the intent."
Examiner - Somewhat Recommended
"...Shaw envisioned a very clear and detailed picture of an oblivious Higgins. It is not surprising that Kubzansky chose to go a different direction, but alas she went too far, making what might have been a strong finish to the play mystifying and disappointing. That being said, this is still a fine show and a wonderful opportunity to see one of Shaw's masterpieces elegantly styled."
ArtsInLA - Not Recommended
"...It says more about Jessica Kubzansky's direction of Pygmalion than about George Bernard Shaw's seminal text that this show seems listless. In the right hands, the century-old play can still be engrossing. But here it lacks bite, even with a pitch-perfect performance by Paige Lindsey White as Eliza Doolittle."
Neon Tommy - Recommended
"...This "Pygmalion" is one of the most bold, insightful, and rewarding theatrical experiences of the season. The fluid interplay between comedy and tragedy, one that blurs the lines between where the laughs end and the solemn considerations begin, truly illuminates Shaw's use of traditional form to mask a vehicle for social change. The Pasadena Playhouse's production asks us to examine the Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle inside all of us-our ability to transform, our need to control, and the way in which we regard human life. Shaw's relevance, having experienced little diminution over the last century that we have been producing his plays, shines the brightest in "Pygmalion," and even he, with his fiery temper and near-impossibility to please, would have to admit that this production is a triumph."
TheatreMania - Recommended
"...Indeed, while there is no shortage of linguistic philosophizing on the Pasadena stage, so much more is going on as well, from politics (both sexual and social) to the dangers of scientific experimentation and, yes, even a bit of human chemistry. Director Jessica Kubzansky and a ripping-good cast of 12 mine every glorious Shavian nugget and exhibit the results in a display that is as resplendent as one of Leah Piehl's bonnets that makes Eliza look like, well, like a lady."
Cultural Weekly - Somewhat Recommended
"...Where the flawed decision-making that affects this Pygmalion originated or why is difficult to assess, but Jessica Kubzansky, who has earned her stripes as a fine director elsewhere in Southern California and certainly at Theatre @ Boston Court, her home theatre, had a lot to overcome in staging this production and managed it only intermittently."
