textFormat stops working on set text in costom text class

programming flash
1

I have a textDisplay class that i want to instantiate in another class and set the text property with the function setText. It works but the problem is that the textformat stops working when I call setText(_theText); if i comment this out the textformat works. how can i make the textformat update with _theText.


package view
{
    import flash.display.MovieClip;
    import flash.text.TextField;
    import flash.text.TextFormat;

    public class TextDisplay extends MovieClip{


    private var textFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
    private var _OxLabel:TextField = new TextField();
    private var _theText:String = "100";

        public function TextDisplay(){

            textFormat.font = "Arial";
            textFormat.size = 21;
            textFormat.bold = true;
            textFormat.color = 0xffffff;

            _OxLabel.text = _theText;
            _OxLabel.setTextFormat(textFormat);
            _OxLabel.selectable = false;
            _OxLabel.mouseEnabled = false;
            addChild(_OxLabel);
        }


         private function setText(_theText){
        _OxLabel.text = _theText;
    }

        public function set theText(value:String):void {
            _theText = value;
            setText(_theText);
        }
    }
}

Thanks!