Ted Lange is a scrapper. He grew up on the rough streets of Oakland, Calif., and look at him now, he says, flashing that famous, toothy grin of his “No scars on this face.”
Lange recently donned that smile for “Entertainment Tonight,” but not the sailor cap he wore for a decade as Isaac the bartender on “The Love Boat.” No, his scar-free face (and tighter, whiter ‘fro) was sporting a ballcap from Denver’s Shadow Theatre. And on the upcoming VH1 reality show “Celebrity Fit Club,” a Shadow button is affixed to Lange’s jacket.
Lange has no ties to Denver, but when it comes to promoting Denver’s only black theater company, “I am going to get them as much national exposure as I can,” he said, “because this is a fight.”
It’s a fight to have stories told that no one else will tell – stories like Lange’s comedy “Four Queens – No Trump,” which he is in town to direct for Shadow.
It’s a fight Lange has waged since the ’60s, when he graduated from London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and bowed on Broadway in “Hair.” At 58, he now has three decades of anecdotes about the common difficulty in getting black plays staged when they aren’t written by one of a small group of commercially viable writers.
“There are great stories the big places are just not going to tell because they’re not written by August Wilson,” said Lange. He recalls staging a play years ago for the Los Angeles Music Center. Reviewers weren’t invited. The only evidence it happened at all was the program and a picture the theater only shot, Lange insists, to prove to the National Endowment for the Arts they did it. The irony:
“What is the National Endowment doing for Shadow? Nothing,” Lange said. “What’s the National Endowment doing for any black theater company? Nothing. All that money goes to opera, ballet, symphony, and to all the big, white theaters.”
Lange has been in town for a month preparing “Four Queens,” which opened Thursday. He doesn’t mind being paid a pittance or staying in a modest B&B on East Colfax Avenue. He’s turned the 19 plays he’s written into a cottage industry for small black theaters across the country, and he often returns to his roots as an actor in the L.A. theater. So his presence here isn’t about money. “It’s about generating a little heat for Shadow,” he said.
Lange has happily embraced the economic opportunities that have come from playing Isaac, but if you address him by that name, “I’ll just gently say, ‘Feel free to call me Ted,”‘ he said.
He writes a sex-advice column for FHM, the lad mag, and is being trailed here for VH1’s “Celebrity Fit Club,” which pits two teams of celebrities to lose the most weight.
Lange works with former Mr. America Tom Terwilliger, who runs Denver’s Riverfront Athletic Club and has helped Lange lose 16 pounds. Just one more reasons Lange sees Isaac as a blessing.
“You could make it into a curse, but why do you want to give yourself grief?” he said. “It wasn’t like I played a villainous character. People liked him. That’s how I get people into the theater. Then they go, ‘Gee, we didn’t know you could do this.”‘
And not many knew he could write a comedy about four black women playing a card came he used to avoid.
“It’s a rambunctious, rowdy, bodacious game called bid whist, and in the 1970s, you could walk onto any black campus and they would be playing it in the cafeteria,” he said. “When I went to Merritt College, I was always asked to play, and I always said, ‘Listen, I’m trying to be an actor, and you Negroes here are wasting your time. While you’re playing this game, I am going to be on Broadway.”‘
That was 1968. Fade to three years later, and Lange is understudying for six men in “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death” on Broadway.
“We’re backstage, and a guy says, ‘Hey, you know how to play bid whist?’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ So that’s where I learned to play – sitting backstage on Broadway.”
“Four Queens” won the NAACP’s 1997 best-play award. Lange says men get to hear what women really say when they aren’t around. “There’s a lot of gentle, knowing elbowing that takes place in the audience,” he said.
As Lange leaves Denver this weekend to star in a play in L.A., he says it’s time for someone else to step up for Shadow.
“Listen, when I was a young man, I was told at every turn not to go into show business,” he said. “But I come from a time when we fought for every inch, and my only ambition then was to be an actor. And I not only became an actor, I became a playwright, I became a director and I became a producer.
“But if I had listened to the naysayers, I would have given up and become an alcoholic or I’d be in jail. So I watch what (Shadow founder Jeffrey Nickelson) does, and I applaud him, because he’s up against it.
“I think someday, somebody in Denver is going to wake up and understand what a gold mine they have here and help him.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
Four Queens -No Trump
COMEDY|Shadow Theatre Company, 1420 Ogden St.|Written and directed by Ted Lange|THROUGH JUNE 25|8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays|$25|303-837-9355
