By Raymond Dean Jones
Put four bodacious sistas around a bid whist table and what do you get? Nasty! Talkin’ it, being it, doing it, cheatin’ (yes, at cards too), and doggin’ folks too, especially men and each other.  The pathos, bawdiness, and outright outrageousness along with incredible humor, make it a special time of the week when four women come together -- a time of analysis (or is that gossip?), catharsis, healing, rage, and love. And in the Regional Premiere of Four Queens – No Trump, written and directed by Ted Lange, we get to sit in and live it all with them. This production, which ends the season, promises to be another blockbuster triumph for Shadow Theatre. Four Queens will play every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, from June 1, 2, and 3, through July 1, with a talk back with author/director Lange and the cast after the opening night performance.
Shadow has once again demonstrated its leadership in the Denver theater galaxy by bringing Ted Lange to Denver to direct this outstanding play. Lange is no stranger to Denver. Just two years ago, he starred in Vohn Regansberger’s delightful Last of the Romantics, spending six weeks in our environs. And in the ‘60s while in his 20s, he performed at the University of Colorado’s Shakespeare Festival, playing the challenging role of Henry in Henry V, receiving wonderful reviews for his work. Subsequently, he had good experiences in Colorado that he has carried with him throughout his life, and gained from personally and professionally. But, I digress.
It began on a sunny Denver Saturday morning, a little after seven o’clock. My phone rang. I answered, “Yes it is me,” to a cheery voice on the other end. “This is Ted Lange, and I’m sorry to call so early.” “Oh, that’s ok,” I replied, “Where are you calling from?” (thinking a Denver hotel).  “Oh, I’m driving my car in LA.”  Now I’m upright – it’s an hour earlier there than here, and he is out and about in his car, and apologizing to me for calling early; and it’s Ted Lange. Now I know this is a special person. After all, he and I are only a few years apart in age, and he was my hero in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when he played Isaac Washington, the handsome, debonair bartender and love interest in Love Boat on ABC for 10 seasons. Only he and Bill Cosby had such sterling TV roles for Black actors at that time.
Lange has been described as a Renaissance Man – one who has a notably wide range of interests and great expertise in those areas. He was born on Jan. 5 in Oakland, California, thus being the answer, in Bronco-land, to the question “Can anything good come out of Oakland?”  After high school, where he “learned in his senior year that he was an actor,” he attended Merrit Junior College and San Francisco City College. A former high school teacher told him he was good enough to have a career in show business, so he left college and went into theater in the Bay Area. “After all,” he said, “I suddenly discovered that acting made girls notice me.” Yes, just before the rest of us.
He appeared in Romeo and Juliet, and then went to L.A. for a year. He did not get one job there. So, he went to New York, landing a role in the first touring company of the musical Hair. He played in Hair on Broadway, and never looked back, except to reflect on the fact that, while he had gotten no roles in L.A., he had learned to hustle and market himself in terms of finding auditions, getting photographs out, and getting through the doors to people. He just needed to get out of L.A. to make it work.                                                           
Of his work in Love Boat, which earned him world wide recognition, Lange said, “It was a wonderful, high class, first class production, filmed all around the world,” with the opportunity to do romantic leads -- an amazing thing at the time for a Black actor, and comedy -- which he loves.  His TV acting career also includes That’s My Mama, Mr. T and Tina, Evening Shade, Family Matters, In the Heat of the Night, and The Tonight Show.
“The stage saved my life,” he said. He toured the country in Driving Ms. Daisy, and began to direct, including an interracial Hamlet starring Glynn Thurman, an avant-garde version of Richard III,  Evil Legacy-- a one woman show about the life of Lucretia Borgia, which he wrote, and many other plays. He is an award-winning director, having won the Artistic Director Achievement Award for Director of An Original Play for his comedy Lemon Meringue Facade,  the Dramalogue Award for Outstanding Director for The Visit, the Oakland Ensemble Theatre’s Paul Robinson Award, and the American Film Institute’s James Cagney Directing Fellow Scholarship Award. He has also directed All of Us, a TV production of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.
He has also written 19 plays. In Shadow’s next season, he will once again direct one of his plays, Soul Survivor, which was performed at the 1984 Olympics. The process by which he writes his plays could be an idiom for life and success.  He starts by deriving a “strong premise.” He then begins to write, letting his subconscious take over. As the information that he seeks to convey builds and shapes the play, things come to him to support the artistic process. This process is marked by the hard work of writing. The hard work generated leads to the success of the endeavor. He focuses all energies on what he is passionate about to get the play written.             
He exhibits that same passion as he currently tours the country acting in and directing his plays, a life he describes as wonderful, even if it takes him from his wife Mary. They have two sons, 23 and 27, who are artists. He recently completed his latest play, George Washington’s Boy, dramatizing the life of Washington’s personal slave. It will premiere in L.A. in February 2007. Lange’s impressive filmography of more than over 20 films includes  Love Boat I  & II, Othello (directed and starred), Terminal Exposure, Penny Ante – The Motion Picture, Glitch,  Record City,  Friday Foste, Larry, Black Belt Jones, and Blade.  Lange has also been an adjunct professor at the School of Cinema/Television at USC, and lectures on drama, acting, and Shakespeare at colleges and high schools nation-wide.
Lange wrote Four Queens in 1997, at the behest of two 40-plus actresses who were friends of his -- out of work and wanting a vehicle for getting on stage. He agreed to help, “and began to think about what women of that age and circumstance do.” They play cards, specifically, bid whist.  As he thought it through, he realized the four women could represent the four suits of the deck of cards:  the Queen of Diamonds – rich bitch, Hearts – looking for a man, Spades – ultimate woman, Clubs – hosting events at her house. The ideas gave him the opportunity to explore Black culture from an interesting angle, and to explore cultural interchange. He believes that women come to the play wanting to see themselves represented in one of the suits.  Men, curious, maybe frightened about what women do together without them, come to see women as they generally do not get to see and hear them. Thus, the play is interactive between cast and audience. 
Four Queens premiered in L.A. in May 1997. It opened to rave reviews, and had an extended run, which has been typical of its reception around the country. This enthusiasm demonstrates that Lange has caressed a nerve, a matrix of bone, flesh and sinew that speaks to the universality and humanness of the Black experience, as it considers survival, toughness, relationships, love, pain, sorrow, and happiness. We are all cards of a suit in the great deck of life. Some of us get “played,” and almost all get “shuffled.”  But if strong and good, we rise up off the table and continue to try to live meaningful lives. 
I recommend that everyone get down to the Shadow Theatre during this run, and get into the “game.” I think with these Four Queens, your ace may get “wild.”