ArtsScene Tulsa World • Page D3 • Tuesday, November 15, 2005

“A Ride With Bob,” the musical play that made its Tulsa debut at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center’s Chapman Music Hall Saturday night, is as raucous, spirited and joyous as the music that inspired it. That would be Western swing, of course, the danceable amalgam of jazz, pop, hillbilly and Southwestern fiddle music born in Texas and perfected right here in Tulsa by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.

As imagined by movie scripter Anne Rapp and Asleep at the Wheel leader Ray Benson – its co-writers – the story of Wills and his rise to fame takes considerable liberties with the facts. But facts and truth aren’t necessarily the same thing, and “A Ride With Bob hews to the truth with good humor, great music and a big heart.

Originating as a kind of with fulfillment for Benson, the story finds the lanky bandleader boarding the bus in Texas for Tulsa’s Cain’s Ballroom, the honky-tonk that Bob Wills (and later his brother Johnnie Lee) made into the Carnegie Hall of Western swing. Luckily for him, the relief bus driver (Marco Perella) turns out to be the ghost of Bob Wills, and once Benson understands he’s not being put on, he realizes that he now has the King of Western Swing to counsel him and answer his questions.

If this sounds heavy, it’s not. The whole notion of the musical life and what it all means was simply an underpinning to the show, which consisted largely of a series of lively musical vignettes illustrating portions of the conversation between Benson and Wills.

Played out on an intriguingly designed stage (by Christopher McCollum, it began with a very young Bob Wills (Damian Green) entranced by the music of the black sharecroppers (including Timothy Curry, a fine vocalist and actor) with whom he’s working the cotton fields. For most of the show, as Perella’s Wills and Benson provide the connecting narrative, Asleep at the Wheel fiddler Jason Roberts played the musical Wills, doing medicine shows, radio broadcasts, and finally, coming to Tulsa’s KVOO and the Cain’s Ballroom.

The second act of the play had a few more sober moments than the first, but even then, CK McFarland’s direction and the inherent snappiness of the script kept things from dragging. And it was an inspired idea to do a three-song miniconcert at the end of the show, especially when Benson brought on Tulsa-area resident and Western-swing great Curly Lewis to play with the band.

The cast members, most of whom play multiple roles, were uniformly good. Although all Benson had to do was play himself, he did it with a subtle touch of melancholy that slowly transformed into joy, clearly through the magic of the music. Jason Roberts made a fine Bob Wills. An excellent fiddler, he also channeled Wills’ spirit and mannerisms. An unrelated Roberts, former Oklahoma politico Walt, did a creditable job sharing lead vocals and fiddle work. Perella, who didn’t play or sing, made his Wills a world-weary but still game veteran of the music biz.

Curry stood out in the supporting cast, as did Rick Perkins, a scene-stealer in a number of parts, including that of W. Lee O’Daniel, Wills’ martinet boss in Forth Worth, Texas, and a Western-movie director.

“Love” is a word that’s misused a lot, but there really is a love at work here, that curious mix of romance and nostalgia that some in the Saturday night audience still feel when they think about the Cain’s Ballroom of a bygone era, and the way they know they felt when a Wills band launched into its first number.

Benson and Rapp understand that love. They understand the magic of Bob Wills as well as the liberating power of his music. And that sympathetic understanding goes a long way toward explaining why “A Ride With Bob” drew two or three standing ovations in its first Tulsa appearance, and probably a few tears as well.

John Wooley 581-8477

john.wooley@tulsaworld.com