![]() ![]() “Have I wasted my life?” Ernestine demands of her mother, Alice (Susannah Flood), numbering the “250 babies born every minute, 15,000 every hour,” with the dramatic over-exaggeration of every sensitive teen. The first scene sets the template for all the following scenes. Will the damn cake ever get placed in the oven? But the cake leadenly Stands for Something-what is ever truly completed in a life? What goes into it? What does it stand for?-and so you wait, and bakers may very well worry about the barely mentioned icing. Prosaically, you wish somebody would finish the mixing already as the years continue. Much as the play, directed by Vivienne Benesch, deploys big themes of love, marriage, mortality, betrayal, and tragedy, there is also a stilted stasis to what unfolds. The passage of time from one distinct era to the next, scene to scene, is marked by the dinging of a cooking bell: How is a cake baked, and how is a life baked? The process of baking the cake is the start-to-will-it-ever-finish? task of this comedy-drama, playing alongside the aging of Ernestine’s life. ![]() Christine Jones’ set not only includes the kitchen of Ernestine’s Grand Rapids, Michigan, home, but a constellation of planets above it, with a stunningly hung universe of floating domestic objects, like a basketball hoop, rolling pin, and cushions.īut for all the scattering passage of time-just over 90 years of Ernestine’s life is represented in this 90-minute Roundabout Theatre Company play-it also stands still, because every moment from her life we see unfolds on her birthday, from her 17th to her death 90 years later aged 107, and the baking of a golden butter birthday cake on that day. ![]() At my performance, I heard a lot of sniffing from audience members all around me.What is the story and substance of an individual life? Noah Haidle’s Broadway play Birthday Candles (American Airlines Theatre, to May 29), sets out to interrogate this Very Big Question through the life of Ernestine ( Debra Messing) and the people, ties, and events that bind around her. On the other hand, others will find its gentle-humored examination of ordinary domestic life to be relatable and deeply moving. One could have a cynical reaction to “Birthday Candles,” finding it sentimental and manipulative, with existential queries and lines of “King Lear” that are didactically repeated in an attempt to make it seem profound. Whereas Emily in “Our Town” relives her 12th birthday after dying in childbirth and feels incredible regret, Ernestine in “Birthday Candles” lives out numerous birthdays and possesses the maturity to understand life and recover from loss. Theater buffs will be tempted to compare “Birthday Candles” with “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder’s classic drama about everyday life. She is joined by five other actors, most of whom play multiple characters over time, including Enrico Colantoni, John Earl Jelks, Crystal Finn, Susannah Flood, and Christopher Livingston. Messing’s continuing transformation in age is relatively understated and incremental, although there are some shifts in physicality, demeanor, and voice. Specific dates and times are not identified throughout the play, although one suspects that Ernestine’s century-long journey was meant to end in the present day. This cycle continues as Ernestine becomes a grandmother and great-grandmother, starts a business, leaves her husband, marries the fumbling boy next door, replaces numerous goldfish, and loses many more people.Īll the while, Ernestine keeps baking her bake and opining about the importance of her rituals in the midst of a vast universe (as represented by the stylized scenic design above the kitchen, which depicts a galaxy of planets and family heirlooms). ![]() But moments later, her mother has died, and she has married her high school boyfriend and has her own rebellious children. Ernestine mixes flour, butter, sugar, and eggs into a batter, puts it into an oven, and eventually takes out a golden yellow cake.Īt first, Ernestine is an assertive and rebellious teen who is determined to not conform. ![]()
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