Lemon Meringue Façade

By Ted Lange

Bite into a piece of lemon meringue pie and what do you taste? Is it tart or is it sweet? Lemon Meringue Faade, a comedy by Ted Lange, takes you through this tongue tingling taste test. Do blondes really have more fun? No longer will only their hairdressers know for sure as these blondes from the nineties bake up a delightful pie full of laughs for you to digest. Squeeze the juice out of four lemons Susan, the writer, Annie, the athlete, Phyllis, the actress, and Linda, the mom-to-be-at-any second, and you have the main ingredients of a riotous filling. Add Laura, an upper crust Pasadena housewife, and a dash of Robert, the loving father-to-be, and you start to taste the tart and the sweet. The recipe just needs a pinch of Richard, the secret ingredient, and the faade is whipped to stiff peaks of humor and fun. Their candid and witty conversations give you a taste of the world of a blonde. Theyre not white bread, theyre Lemon Meringue!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490743813

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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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.

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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