Panto Program at Pasadena Playhouse

This traditionally slim week of theater openings gets a boost at Pasadena Playhouse with a program of family theater by writer/performer B. J. Turner.

“They’re based on the British pantos or pantomimes,” he said. “But it’s better not to say ‘pantomime,’ because people think of mime.” A panto’s musical score, he added, “can be taken from Gilbert & Sullivan, Broadway, or popular songs. There’s also a rapport between the audience and performers . . . It’s like Monty Python, Benny Hill, ‘Saturday Night Live’ and the best Disney cartoons--all rolled into one.”

Prompted by Pasadena Playhouse artistic co-director Susan Dietz’s desire to bring young audiences into the theater, Turner and partner Steve Cassling made their first--and very successful--Playhouse appearance last year with panto stagings of “Robin Hood” and “A Christmas Carol.” “We played all the parts, which meant a lot of quick-changes,” Turner recalled. “We also brought some of the kids in the audience up onstage to perform in the smaller parts.”

This time around, Turner and Cassling will do back-to-back stagings of “Robin Hood” and Turner’s “The Road to Oz,” based loosely on “The Wizard of Oz.” “They’re only an hour and ten minutes (each), but they pack in almost a whole Broadway musical,” he said. “Also, there’s no median age for audiences. The way I’ve staged these shows, kids from five to 75 can enjoy them.”

DOTING ON DYLAN: Drew Tombrello had already performed in a play about Welsh poet Dylan Thomas three times when he realized the show had a big problem. “Twenty percent of the audiences were going out of the theater disliking (Thomas),” he said. “If they didn’t know him before that, all they saw was a drunken, womanizing lout.”

Tombrello decided to rectify the situation by writing his own play.

In his “Dylan: A Bard’s Eye View” (currently at Sherman Oaks’ Actors Alley), the actor plays Thomas, quoting from his works and lecturing about his life--and uncovering a host of problems. “He didn’t write a major poem the last 20 years of his life,” Tombrello noted. “He also suffered continually with alcoholism, which began when he was 16. He was smart enough to realize he was killing himself, but couldn’t find a way to write--which pushed him further into the bottle.”

The conflict between the gregarious public person (Richard Burton dubbed Thomas “the greatest talker of all time”) and the “private, sensitive” soul is, Tombrello thinks, rife with dramatic tension: “When Dylan came to America, people reacted to him like he was a bobby soxer,” he pointed out. “(Giving readings) on the podium, he drank, he smoke; he lived up there. Here was this short, swarthy guy--who could also be a weepy, baggy-pants clown. It was all part of his charm, and it was all him. He was always on.”

THEATER BUZZ: As if those “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding” folks didn’t have enough on their minds with eight-times-a-week nuptials . . . Twenty-five of the show’s cast members have decamped from their Park Plaza wedding site and begun spreading seasonal good cheer around town with caroling at nursing homes, AIDS hospices, Los Angeles Children’s Hospital, the Seventh Street Marketplace and La Brea Tar Pits.

“It’s a high school chorus with a lot of attitude,” said Nancy Cassaro, a.k.a. “bride” Tina Vitale. Calling themselves Artificial Intelligence Yule Tigers, the combo sings traditional carols--plus music from Mexico and Jamaica--and appears in full costume: black pants, white shirts and green bow ties for the men; white blouses and polyester red skirts for the ladies. “Using red felt,” Cassaro declared, “was just a little too cliche.”

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: “Once In Doubt,” Raymond J. Barry’s black comedy about a relationship on the rocks, is playing at Los Angeles Theater Center. David Saint directs Barry, Kim O’Kelley and Howard Schechter.

Cheered The Times’ Sylvie Drake: “The play smacks of Pinter at some intersection with Sam Shepard and the Flying Karamazovs . . . Barry and company have created a roaring entertainment out of this perilous journey through the straits of creative life.”

In the Daily News, Daryl H. Miller found “Its quirky humor elicits frequent laughs, and its brutal passion causes shudders. In the final analysis, however, the play is deeply disturbing, and many viewers may find it too difficult to stomach.”

From Drama-Logue’s Richard Scaffidi: “So often an abstract, conceptual theater piece like this is an ordeal to watch . . . ‘Once,’ however, is both abundantly challenging and splendidly entertaining, mightily ambitious for its explorations of everything from the male ego and sex as a weapon to the very purpose of art.”