Los Angeles Times
- Recommended
"...
The theater might want to frisk future ticketholders for produce, or add an anger-management session to the bill: It's that hard to handle the emotions provoked by this gorgeously directed and acted revival."
Variety
- Recommended
"...The younger generation isn't up to Richard Chamberlain's level in ‘The Heiress,' but Ruth and Augustus Goetz's venerable 1947 warhorse comes through anyway for good old-fashioned entertainment, overlong but absorbing."
LA Weekly
- Recommended
"...A dramatization of that hardening of the heart, in a riveting performance by Heather Tom, is on full display at the Pasadena Playhouse in the latest revival of Ruth and Augustus Goetz's 1947 stage adaptation of the novel, called The Heiress, which opened Sunday."
Backstage
- Recommended
"..."The Heiress" can easily devolve into a potboiler costume drama in the wrong hands, but director Dámaso Rodriguez shows admirable restraint with pacing and blocking, and the actors keep their emotional dynamics largely within the confines of 19th-century New York society."
Stage and Cinema
- Recommended
"...The new Pasadena Playhouse production offers a brilliant corrective to the stuffy revivals of classic works so frequently seen in the Southland. This is how to treat a classic: assemble an A-1 cast and let it play. With this fine, funny take on a venerable drama, director Dámaso Rodriguez proves that tragedy works best in counterpoint."
LA Splash
- Recommended
"...
A beautifully staged and well-acted production of THE HEIRESS by Ruth and Augustus Goetz opened tonight at the Pasadena Playhouse."
Stage Scene LA
- Recommended
"...The Heiress may have reached the ripe old age of sixty-five, but you'd hardly know it from the latest revival of Ruth and Augustus Goetz's 1947 Broadway hit, adapted from Henry James' classic novel Washington Square and currently engrossing and delighting audiences in equal measure at the Pasadena Playhouse."
StageHappenings.com
- Recommended
"...The Heiress is an impressive production under the direction of Damaso Rodriguez playing at the Pasadena Playhouse."
Examiner
- Recommended
"...Acting, direction, set design, lighting design and costume design are top-notch in the Pasadena Playhouse production of The Heiress by Ruth Goetz and Augustus Goetz, making it a must-see before the all-too-soon closing performance on May 20, 2012."
CurtainUp
- Recommended
"...The Heires is an American classic and so is the Pasadena Playhouse which first produced it in 1950. One might say the same for the leading man Richard Chamberlain who plays Dr. Sloper. All three are timeless."
BlogCritics.org
- Recommended
"...
Now, 62 years after its original production at the Playhouse, the Tony- and Academy Award-winner returns in a sumptuous production with an appealing cast."
On Stage Los Angeles
- Somewhat Recommended
"...The plot moves slowly, possibly by director Tàmaso Rodriguez's design. And, though presented in beautiful images, the story of how Miss Sloper is swept off her feet almost immediately by the fortune hunter, Morris Townsend (slick Steve Coombs); spurred on by the romantic notions of Aunt Lavinia, and all, it takes much too long to tell."
Will Call
- Recommended
"...But you will, in any case, find the story affecting and the acting first rate."
Culture Spot LA
- Recommended
"...The Pasadena Playhouse should inherit a healthy box office with their current talented-cast revival of the surprisingly delightful "The Heiress.""
The Stage Struck Review
- Recommended
"..."The Heiress" offers one of the greater female parts in American theatrical literature. To see it reinvented over and over, in subtle gradations of character, is to watch the art of the actor and director at its finest. The artistic image of Catherine cannot remain static any more than one of Hamlet can. Each new generation must take something away from the piece. Rodriguez and Tom know that, and it shows."
