Tony winners reunite for a dark comedy about greed that’ll make you squirm

Times are tough all over the planet, but imagine what would happen if the richest woman in the world came from your hometown and returned offering to save it from ruin by offering a billion dollars – on one nefarious condition?

The Pasadena Playhouse is serving up a wickedly entertaining take on that dilemma with its current darkly comedic production “The Visit,” which is running this Wednesday through Sunday, Oct. 4.

Stacked with a 17-member cast headed by Melinda Page Hamilton (Mad Men, Desperate Housewives, The Peripheral) as the visiting Claire Zachanassian, the play marks a reunion between Tony Award-winning actor Jefferson Mays and Tony Award-winning director Darko Tresnjak following up their triumphant run of “Amadeus” earlier in the Playhouse season. ,

According to actress Jennifer Chang, who plays the dual roles of a shopkeeper and Frau Schill, the play has plenty to say about the current state of American society.

“I definitely think there’s a message, and the message has to do with the ills of money and capitalism run wild.  And secondarily, what it means to be part of a community, or what it takes for community to be cohesive. And what do people need to live?” notes Chang. “There’s different archetypes of townspeople who make up the neighborhood. We add up to having an effect in terms of a community, and how decisions that have to be made by individuals that add up to a group mentality, how that can be a force.  That can be a force to be reckoned with, and hopefully it’ll inspire people to think about how to harness that energy for good.”

Chang grew up in San Francisco before studying theater at New York University and UC San Diego, where the program had a partnership with the La Jolla Playhouse. Upon moving to Los Angeles, she became curious about directing and “eventually directing took on a life of its own” in a career that has masterfully balanced both arenas.

“I never necessarily gave up acting as much as the directing career really took off and I’m also an educator at UCLA, as the head of Acting there,” explains Chang. “On the directing side, I won the Emmy for the LA County Holiday Celebration, since we were awarded the LA area Emmy for live event. And I got to have my own statuette as writer on the Celebration. So it’s been a really wild, fun ride.”

Chang’s working relationship with director Darko Tresnjak extends back to her student days at UC San Diego, where he was a guest director while she earned her MFA in Acting. In fact, it was he who developed her love for directing by hiring her as his assistant director on a couple of shows and continuing to be her mentor over the decades since.

In fact, Chang inspired Tresnjak to work with the Playhouse, telling him of her great experience directing “A Doll’s House Part 2” there in a prior season as he was considering taking on “Amadeus” at the hallowed institution. She told him she would be willing to “just hang out and be in the room” while he worked on that play, but she wound up being cast in it and invited back now for “The Visit.”

“I can honestly say that Pasadena Playhouse feels like an artistic home, and that the people who run it feel like family to me, and I had a wonderful time directing there,” says Chang. “I felt very supported as a director. I feel very supported as an actor. It’s really so special to not only have the experience of having been a director there and that relationship, having that relationship with the staff and the crew and the behind the scenes crew.

“And now to be on stage, there’s a lot of crew members backstage who i get to work intimately with, from wigs and dressers and the on-deck crew that I get to interact with much more closely as an actor than i did as a director. So that is really fun.”

“The Visit” runs Wednesday through next Sunday, Oct. 4 at the Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena.  Tickets are available at pasadenaplayhouse.org or call (626)356-7529.