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Preview of a Review: "Life with Father" by Theatre Tulsa
Published: 3/18/2011 11:14 PM
Last Modified: 3/18/2011 11:14 PM

The full review of Theatre Tulsa's "Life with Father," the company's second entry for the Tulsa Awards for Theater Excellence, will appear in Monday's Tulsa World.

But for those thinking about skipping basketball and taking in a bit of theater, here is a preview:


Sometimes, live theater can make us confront and ponder the deepest questions and darkest secrets of mankind.
And sometimes, live theater can provide the best escape from
these self-same things.
“Life with Father,” the latest offering from Theatre Tulsa, falls squarely into this latter category. Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse’s play, based on a trio of memoirs by Clarence Day Jr., is an old-fashioned comedy in every sense of the word.
It has a large cast (17 actors of all ages) in a quaintly domestic setting, telling the story of a few days in the lives of a New York City family around the turn of the 20th century, when telephones were an untrustworthy invention and cabs were hired for a dollar an hour.
Of course, this was a time when a dollar actually meant something. And Father (Ed Dill) is all about making sure every dollar of income was duly accounted for in its out-go.
In fact, Father has iron-clad, and loudly declaimed, opinions about how everything should be...Everything has to be just so, no matter how many servants the family has to go through to find ones that can put up with Father’s persnickety bombast.
But nothing is ever — or really, can ever be — “just so.” Not, at least, if the purpose of the story is to make people chuckle.
Theatre Tulsa’s production, which opened Friday at the Tulsa PAC, achieves this seemingly modest but quite difficult goal. The show’s pace is leisurely, although director Billie Sue Thompson does not allow it to lag, and the humor is modest and gentle.

"Life with Father" has performances at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and March 24-26, and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Tulsa PAC, 110 E. Second St. For tickets: 918-596-7111, tulsaworld.com/mytix.



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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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