A new gig for this experienced bartender

Expect some ‘Love Boat’ references in from Ted Lange in ‘Christmas on the Rocks’

When you see Ted Lange mixing drinks onstage in the role of The Bartender in TheaterWorks’ seasonal staple “Christmas on the Rocks,” he’ll be dropping a few “Love Boat” references into the mix.

Lange played bartender Isaac Washington on “The Love Boat” for nine seasons on ABC-TV plus a few TV movies.

“The predominance of that show when it was on still has an impact,” the actor says. “There are still ripples of what it’s done to the industry of cruising. That was a dying industry when we started in the late ’70s.”

With the exception of a cameo in an episode of the Lee Majors action series “The Fall Guy,” Lange says he hasn’t performed behind a bar since the last “The Love Boat” special in 1990.

However, he was recently found on the other side of the bar, as the legendary Shakespearean drunken lout Falstaff in a production of “Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

It’s just one of many Shakespeare roles Lange has played in his long career. He’s even written a prequel to “Othello” exploring some of the cultural themes in the play; he delivered a talk about that show in a conference on Shakespearean authorship at the Mark Twain House and Museum last month.

Rob Ruggiero, who conceived and directed “Christmas on the Rocks,” tries to add new material or new faces to the show to keep it fresh.

“When I first read ‘Christmas on the Rocks,’ I thought, ‘This is a funny play,” Lange says. “Then, dealing with the expectations that the audience will have if I am in it, we added some fun things, some surprises.”

“When Tom Bloom told me he was retiring from acting and The Bartender role opened up, we had to think nonwhite,” Ruggiero says. ” It was our operations manager Bill Farquhar who said, ‘You should call Isaac from ‘The Love Boat.’ I … messaged Ted on Instagram. I played the Val card.”

Lange continues the story. “Rob got in touch with me and said ‘Ted, you know Valerie Harper.’ We both loved Valerie.” (Harper appeared in “The Love Boat”’s ‘Egyptian Cruise’ episode in 1986. She lifted TheaterWorks’ national profile in 1997 when she appeared there in “The Dragon