CORE OF ANGER AT THE CENTER OF LANGE'S `LEMON'.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

Omigosh, you think, what's this? Chopin preludes in what's billed as ``a comedy about four blondes,'' written by a former mainstay of ``The Love Boat''?

Relax. In ``Lemon Meringue Facade'' at the Whitefire Theatre, playwright Ted Lange quickly gets down to business, and his business is the stuff of punchy, politically incorrect satire, if not unsinkable sitcoms. The author of 14 plays, including the recent Whitefire hit ``Four Queens - No Trump,'' Lange is a fearless comic writer who knows how to put a time bomb on stage and make it explode.

Though ``Lemon Meringue Facade'' is probably too racy for prime time, its premise nonetheless seems a generation or so out of date: A middle-class Pasadena household gets turned upside-down when hanky-panky develops between a white woman (or two) and an African-American man (or two). Even network television - hardly the cutting edge of popular culture - long ago moved beyond the taboo of biracial romance and onto ``Ellen.''

Yet, ``Lemon Meringue Facade'' is no cutesy-pie period piece, a harmless updating of ``Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?'' The play, which Lange also directed, has a palpable core of anger, as if it had been festering in the author's gut for decades.

That anger lends wit and psychological substance to what otherwise might've been a fluffy, down-the-hatch affair about four gal pals with a taste for bittersweet life lessons. It also makes it easier to deal with Lange's penchant for oral-sex jokes, some of them so cheesy that you wonder if set designer Marco De Leon was tempted to paint those banana-yellow walls a bright Velveeta-orange instead.

``Lemon Meringue Facade'' has been double-cast with a mix of Equity and non-Equity actors. In the production I saw, Shano Palovich, Kim Lankford, Jill Whelan and Marla Rubinoff brought heart and credibility to roles that initially seem only skin-deep. Palovich gets the best chance to show her chops as a cynical jokester fed up with being pregnant by her geeky husband, Robert (Gary Van Nastu).

Whelan, another ``Love Boat'' refugee, does a funny transformation from mousy tennis bum to righteous soul sister after she starts dating Richard, a savvy African-American actor (well played by James A. Watson Jr.) who's sadly used to dealing with inane white people.

THE FACTS

What: ``Lemon Meringue Facade.''

Where: Whitefire Theater, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks.

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays; through March 15.

Tickets: $20. Call Tickets LA, [phone].

Our rating: Two Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Pictured with ``Lemon Meringue Facade'' writer-director Ted Lange, center, are Marla Rubinoff, left, Kim Lankford, Jill Whelan and Shano Palovich, who star in Lange's play.