Lemon Meringue Façade
By Ted Lange
()
About this ebook
Ted Lange
Ted Lange personifies the Renaissance Man Theatre Award he received from the NAACP. A graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Lange’s career has gained global recognition as a gifted actor of stage and screen, revered director, and prolific writer. Lange has penned twenty-four plays, including his historical trilogy George Washington’s Boy, The Journals of Osborne P. Anderson, and Lady Patriot. Other plays include Four Queens—No Trump, a comedy that played to rave reviews and won NAACP Best Play; Lemon Meringue Façade, produced off Broadway in New York; and Behind the Mask, Lange’s one-man show on the life of Paul Laurence Dunbar, which toured nationwide. Additional plays are Evil Legacy—the Story of Lucretia Borgia and Born a Unicorn, a musical about Ira Aldridge. Lange garnered worldwide fame for his portrayal of Isaac from The Love Boat.
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Lemon Meringue Façade - Ted Lange
Copyright 2014 Ted Lange.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.
Cover photograph: Ted Lange Back Row, Left to Right: Cathy Girkins,
Janelle Snyder, Mary Lange, Jen Hayes
Photograph by: Matthew Snyder
Pie Photographs by: Mary Lange
ISBN: 978-1-4907-4380-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4907-4382-0 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4907-4381-3 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014914057
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,
and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.
Trafford rev. 10/13/2014
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CONTENTS
Author’s Notes
Act I
Act II
Dedicated
To
My Friend
Alison Iannucci
My Sister-In-laws
Cathy Girkins
Debby Ley
and
My Wife,
Mary
All Lemon Meringue Ladies!
Special Thanks
to
Dan Hirsh,
The Whitefire Theatre, Los Angeles, California
Dan Lauria, Playwright’s Kitchen Ensemble
Anna Hutchinson Rosalie Lazarus Pat Tobin
Janelle and Matthew Snyder Jen Hayes
Melody Brooks
The New Perspectives Theatre, New York City, New York
Author’s Notes
In 1989, I did the national tour of Driving Miss Daisy. I was on the B tour and Brock Peters was on the A tour. What’s the difference? The A tour sits down in a city anywhere from 6-10 weeks. The B tours is comprised of a bus and truck performing one night stands in small cities and weekends in medium cities.
Rosemary Prinz was Daisy, Fred Sanders was her son, Boolie, and I, of course, was Hoke. Charles Neson Reilly was our director and we rehearsed in New York City at the John Houseman Theatre. We did an eight week sit down in Birmingham, Michigan, then after that… we held on to our hats, hit the road, and performed one night stands.
On a tour, one hopes that you will get along with the other actors. Nothing is certain, ’till you’re on the road, sharing time, talking politics, and evading the boredom of the road. In Birmingham, we had an opening night party. Fred Sanders and I were standing together at the reception, when we noticed a beautiful woman. She was earthy, with ringlets of auburn hair cascading down to her shoulders, no makeup, but a fresh clean face with a warm smile. Her clothes reminded me of my early days growing up in San Francisco in the 60’s. She wore a long flowing print dress, handmade bracelets on her arm, and an attitude of openness that brought the hippy, summer of love to mind.
I heard Fred say, Wow!
I said, You like her?
Yeah, you don’t?
he queried. Nope, I like that lady over there in the red dress.
Fred looked across the room and there was a bottled blonde in a tight red dress. Maybe a little too tight, but she was making it work. She had on spiked heels with long legs that made her calves look perfect. She stood there with confidence and sensuality and she wore a conservative amount of makeup on her face, with red lipstick to pick up the color of her dress. A really lovely face to my way of thinking. Fred studied her a moment then said, Oh, you like Lemon Meringue.
My reply was, Yes, I guess I do.
I knew right then and there it was going to be a great tour, because we were not going to be stepping on each other’s toes when it came to being attracted to women. That phrase ‘Lemon Meringue’ stayed with me.
Some years later, I wrote a play for black women entitled Four Queens – No Trump. The play premiered in Los Angeles, at the Whitefire Theatre. It had show stopping laughs, four unique and juicy roles for black actresses and, since, has been produced all over the country. Some of my white actress friends came to see the show. They loved the comradery of the women on stage. One actress, Stacie Turk, lamented, How come Black women always get the best roles?
That is, of course, not true. Ted, why don’t you write a play for some white women? Something we could sink our teeth into.
I thought about it for a moment. Now that is a challenge for a black playwright. There are things I would like to see white women fess up to, that were not going to be written by a white male playwright and as far as white female playwrights were concerned Vagina Monologues was a few years away.
The words Lemon Meringue kept popping into my brain and a play with four blonde women started to take shape in my mind. As I sat down to write the play, the characters took shape easily and the situation for bringing them together came to me clear as a bell. The thing that white women have to deal with is the façade of social standing. Some