The playing space at New World Stage never looked so good and homey as it does in Common Ground Theatre’s production of Ted Lange’s “Four Queens ” No Trump” (through Oct. 15 at 917 9th Ave. downtown, www.commongroundtheatre.org). In case Lange sounds familiar, he is most familiar as Isaac the Bartender in “Love Boat.”
“Four Queens” concerns four earthy, bawdy black women who know how to live, to listen and to love. Deola (Deborah Branch) is a self-styled dog groomer and psychic. She always knows who it is at the door of her house, where the women meet once a week to play Bid Whist, a card game popular in the African-American community.
Jocenia (Yolanda Franklin, a veteran of director Dr. Floyd Gaffney’s “Gospel Messiah”) apparently lives “the life” as wife of a wealthy man who indulges her every whim. All is not as it seems with her or with the others, Maude (Candace Ludlow Trotter), who got a speeding ticket for driving her red Porsche 95 on the I-110; and the new member of the group, a recently divorced Texan named Edna (Che Lyons). Veteran actor Bill “W.T.” Dunn (a.k.a. Dunnan) completes the company as Jefferson.
All the travails and their outcomes are predictable; however, a couple of hours in the company of these fine, funny women are worth the expenditure. Lange has some grand lines; for instance, Edna’s “Aren’t you supposed to drink Chardonnay with chitlins?”
Gaffney, a founding faculty member and now professor emeritus at University of California, San Diego, directed nearly 80 productions at Southeast Community Theatre, San Diego’s oldest African-American troupe. When he took over as artistic director in 2004, he renamed it Common Ground Theatre to better reflect its grassroots, cross-cultural mission.
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