Life With Father is a beloved comedy, based on Clarence Day's memoirs, chronicling the household of Clarence Day Sr., a stubborn, blustering but ultimately loving Wall Street patriarch presiding over his wife Vinnie and their four red-headed sons in 1880s New York. Much of the play's comedy stems from Clarence's tyrannical insistence on order and his own infallibility running headlong into the good-natured chaos of a large Victorian family, and from Vinnie's shrewd, gently manipulative skill at getting her way despite her husband's blustering. The central plot thread finds the family scandalized to discover that the elder Clarence, despite his lifelong churchgoing, was never formally baptized, and Vinnie's determined campaign to remedy this oversight provides much of the play's comic momentum. Along the way, the family navigates courtships, household finances, and the everyday indignities of raising boys in a strict but loving home. Renowned as one of the longest-running non-musical plays in Broadway history, its affectionate portrait of old-fashioned domestic life has made it a perennial favorite for community theaters.

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