Stars of TV’s Love Boat Reunite Off-Broadway in a New Play about the Civil War

Right now, New Yorkers can head to Theatre Row on West 42nd Street to reunite with three performers they may have spent time cruising with years ago.

Yes, Ted Lange, Jill Whelan, and Fred Grandy were all stars of ABC’s Love Boat, the romantic comedy series that beamed into millions of homes each Saturday night from September 1977 to April 1986. And now three of the stars are sharing a stage for a play that Lange has written. TV fans—and those who can’t get enough of Civil War drama —take note. Lange’s play is called Lady Patriot, and it deals with three actual women Varina Davis, Elizabeth Van Lew, and Mary Bowser. They were spies, of sorts, during that war who managed to breach the inner sanctum of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, who believed they were on his side while they stealthily leaked information to the Union forces.

Already, local stations and fans are signing up to get a look at this reunion of the three actors. And the Love Boat trio is having a great time. ”We’ve been friends since 1978,” says Grandy, who played the ship’s bursar, Burl “Gopher” Smith on the long-running series, “and we have been looking for a long time for a way to be together again.” After Love Boat ended its 10-year run, Grandy returned to his native Iowa and served four terms as a Republican congressman before making an unsuccessful bid for governor in 1994. But his time on the receiving end of journalistic inquiries in elected office may have given him some insight into his current character.

He plays a journalist in this one and feels the pain of those who had to put their lives on the line to get the truth out to citizens. “Anyone who covered the Civil War had to be terribly burned out,” he says. “The cost of the war was a burden, in every way.”

Jill Whelan was a child actor who literally grew up on the Love Boat, playing the daughter of Captain Merrill Stubing, the character played by Gavin MacLeod, who died in 2021 at the age of 90..

In Lady Patriot, Whelan plays one of the trio of women in the Jefferson Davis circle but sneakily supported the other side. “It’s great to play a character who isn’t a vapid and underused female,” says Whelan, who had a varied career after Love Boat, attending university in England and working as an event planner at Madison Square Garden. She eventually returned to acting in soaps and with a one-woman play, Jill Whelan: An Evening in Dry Dock, in which she dished on some of the celebrities she encountered on board.

She’s a lot more serious in the current role. “My character, Elizabeth, was expected, like all women then, to stay home and knit. But she was different. She became well read, which made her able to take the stands she took.”

Ted Lange, who is Black, also takes on racial prejudice here. After all, a little thing called slavery was at the crux of the conflict at the time. That “time” endured, of course, and Lange has talked in the past about other performers not eager to shake a Black man’s hand . . . even when that man was the star of the show. Lange was a Shakespearean actor when he was handed the original script for the Love Boat pilot. Since he was only in three scenes as bartender Isaac Washington in the pilot, he had to be persuaded by his agent to take it primarily because it was a good payday in Acapulco, where the pilot was being filmed. Nobody at ABC expected the show to take off, especially since it was playing opposite the top-rated Carol Burnett Show on CBS.

Lange always had an interest in history, and says he became a playwright almost by accident. He has written other historical plays but says this one feels special. “I want your readers to know I did a lot of research to put this play together,” he says. “I print my bibliography because sometimes audiences don’t agree with, or believe, the historical facts. I went through 27 books and bios to get the information. History can be fun and entertaining. I think audiences are going to really love and enjoy this historical ride.”

It’s a long voyage from that boat so many television viewers enjoyed decades ago. The trio loved that experience, and it turned out to be a learning experience in many ways. “My journey as actor in The Love Boat was the best experience I ever had,” says Lange. “And it allowed me to learn all the crafts. I wanted to be a TV director, and the show afforded me that opportunity. I also wanted to be a writer, and I learned my skills as a playwright by writing episodes of our show.”

As for this show, at Theatre Row, its limited engagement runs through Sept. 20. The hope here? “The goal is to tell a great and somewhat different story,” says Lange. “And yes, to get a bigger house and a longer run.”

Theatre Row, 410 W. 42nd St., bfany.org

Michele Willens hosts Stage Right or Not on the PBS station robinhoodradio.