STAGE REVIEW : A Different Hue to ‘Biloxi Blues’ at La Mirada

Ted Lange is top-billed in Neil Simon’s you’re-in-the-Army-now comedy, “Biloxi Blues,” at La Mirada Civic Theatre.

Readers may be forgiven a double take. Matthew Broderick headlined the show when it was introduced to the world at the Ahmanson in 1984. How can a 40-ish black actor, best known for his years on “The Love Boat,” replace a brash young white guy in the role of a Jewish kid from Brooklyn?

Not to worry. Lange plays the Jewish kid’s tough drill sergeant, which the ad copy writers have elevated into the leading role. Such are the benefits of a cruise on “The Love Boat.”

Even so, Lange’s casting creates a credibility problem. The play’s young GIs are shocked to learn that one of them might be half-black. Yet they apparently don’t notice their sergeant’s race--and this is in Biloxi, Miss., in 1943.

Charles Fuller’s “A Soldier’s Play” and the film version, “A Soldier’s Story,” recently made common knowledge of the fact that the Army was still segregated during World War II. So this version of “Biloxi Blues” requires an extra suspension of disbelief.

This certainly doesn’t sink the play--not with prolific Glenn Casale at the helm. Casale does a much better job of whipping his troops into shape than does the play’s Sgt. Toomey. His staging is thoroughly enjoyable, and its real star, Stuart Rogers as budding writer Eugene Jerome, is sweetly hilarious.

But the play doesn’t quite have the edge that it had at the Ahmanson. Rogers is almost too cuddly; we don’t get as much of a sense of a young man at a critical turning point. Lange barks with authority, but his confrontation with the defiant young Arnold Epstein (Kevin Goetz) isn’t as icily intense as it should be. And Goetz, in his early scenes, tilts his character too obviously, and too soon, toward the appearance of homosexuality.

The entire supporting cast is first-rate; the actors are Christian Whelan, Rob Garrison, Jeanne Bardwell, Constance Harcar, Brian Christopher Williams and Ben Schick. The design--by Joanne Trunick McMaster (sets), Raun Yankovich (lighting), Garland W. Riddle (costumes) and Chuck McCarroll (sound)--stays close to the original prototype.

Performances are at 14900 La Mirada Blvd., Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m., through Jan. 24. Tickets: $15.50-19.50; (213) 944-9801 or (714) 994-6310.