Pasadena Playhouse goes dark as ‘Camelot’ ends

Playhouse goes dark

The final curtain has come down at the Pasadena Playhouse -- for now.

Sunday marked not only the last performance of “Camelot,” the theater’s current show, but also the closing of the historic theater as its leaders search for a way out of its money woes.

It was announced in late January that the theater would halt productions on its main stage because of financial difficulties. The 90-year-old landmark is strapped for cash and faces more than $500,000 in immediate bills, as well as payments on more than $1.5 million in bank loans and other debts.

“Tonight, in a quasi-ceremony, we are closing this theater,” Stephen Eich, the theater’s executive director, said from the stage after “Camelot” ended. “We know not for how long, but we are absolutely optimistic that it will, in fact, reopen.”

-- Yvonne Villarreal RSC plans NYC stand

New Yorkers are familiar with Shakespeare in the Park, but come July 2011, there will be a new twist on the Bard: Shakespeare at the Armory.

During a six-week residency, the Royal Shakespeare Company will perform five plays in repertory in a specially constructed theater within the Park Avenue Armory’s 55,000-square-foot Drill Hall. The engagement will mark the first time the RSC has performed such an extensive repertory in this country.

After seeking in vain for a local theater that could reproduce the design and layout of the RSC’s intimate, thrust-stage Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, “we opted to build a full-scale replica,” Lincoln Center Festival director Nigel Redden explained.

It will take two weeks to construct the 930-seat, three-level auditorium within the hall.

-- Susan Reiter Bicycle knocks Olney off air

Warren Olney, longtime host of the public-affairs shows “To the Point” and “Which Way, L.A.?” on KCRW-FM (89.9), is off the air this week after suffering injuries in a bicycle mishap Thursday.

In a statement released to The Times, Olney said he received cuts and bruises and had to get stiches after his bike collided with a car door that opened in his path.

He said he had planned to take off this week anyway and plans to return to the Santa Monica public radio station on Monday.

-- Lee Margulies Film stars vie for Oliviers

Hollywood heavyweights feature strongly in the race for Britain’s 2010 Laurence Olivier theater awards, with Rachel Weisz, Jude Law, James Earl Jones and Keira Knightley among the nominees announced Monday.

Jones is shortlisted for best actor for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” alongside Law for “Hamlet,” James McAvoy for “Three Days of Rain,” Mark Rylance for “Jerusalem,” Ken Stott for “A View From the Bridge” and Samuel West for “Enron.”

Weisz received a best actress nomination for her performance as faded belle Blanche Dubois in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Her competitors are Gillian Anderson for “A Doll’s House,” Lorraine Burroughs for “The Mountaintop,” Imelda Staunton for “Entertaining Mr. Sloane” and Juliet Stevenson for “Duet for One.”

“Pirates of the Caribbean” star Knightley is nominated in the supporting actress category for her turn as a manipulative movie starlet in “The Misanthrope.”

The Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of Broadway’s Tonys, honor achievements in London theater, musicals, dance and opera. The winners will be announced March 21.

-- associated press MTV logo faces reality

For the first time in the network’s 29-year history, MTV has decided to give the channel’s iconic logo a face-lift, dropping the words “Music Television.”

“The people who watch it today, they don’t refer to MTV as music television. They don’t have the same emotional connection that, say, the people who are writing about [the logo change] do,” said Tina Exarhos, MTV’s head of marketing.

MTV long ago abandoned music as a programming mainstay in favor of genre-busting reality shows such as like “The Osbournes,” “Newlyweds,” “Jackass” and “The Hills.” It is currently riding high with the docudrama “Teen Mom” and “Real World”-esque “Jersey Shore.”

-- Denise Martin