Paul Lazarus Picks Openers in Pasadena : Stage: The new artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse selects a thriller, a play with political overtones and a revival to start his first season.

The first Pasadena Playhouse season to be selected by the theater’s new artistic director Paul Lazarus will feature a new thriller by Rupert (“Accomplice”) Holmes, a new play with political overtones by Mark St. Germain, and a revival of A.R. Gurney’s comedy “The Dining Room.”

“The Dining Room,” Gurney’s first major hit, will open the season, running July 21-Aug. 25. Six actors play a variety of roles in scenes that take place around an upper-middle class dining room. The play was produced at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre in 1983 and at West Hollywood’s Coronet Theatre in 1986. Another professional production is scheduled to play three performances at the Norris Theatre in Rolling Hills Estates later this month, in repertory with two other Gurney plays.

“I loved the play, and I don’t think it got a good airing here,” said Lazarus. He didn’t see the production at the Coronet, but his impression of it was based on “research” including talks with Gurney’s representatives. “I don’t want to throw stones at a production I didn’t see,” he added. He hopes “The Dining Room” will be a way “to develop a relationship” with Gurney.

Next up is St. Germain’s “Camping With Henry and Tom,” slated for Sept. 23-Oct. 27. It’s a fictional account of an actual camping trip taken by Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and President Warren G. Harding in 1921. St. Germain is the author of two plays that were produced at the Coast Playhouse in West Hollywood in 1986: “Out of Gas on Lover’s Leap” and “The Gifts of the Magi.” Lazarus directed St. Germain’s musical “Johnny Pye and the Foolkiller” in New Jersey last year.

Lazarus said “Camping” “has tremendous resonance for our current situation regarding the nature of the American presidency.”

Holmes, whose “Accomplice” was a big hit for the playhouse in 1989, wrote a new comedy thriller about a billionaire recluse, “Solitary Confinement,” scheduled for Nov. 24-Dec. 29. Lazarus said he would be coy about further plot details: “If you talk too much about it, you blow the wad.”