If that’s the idea, there’s a distancing to this characterization that blunts the play’s clearly intended emotional impact.īecause what begins sweetly enough only grows treacly and saccharin the longer it lingers on the palate. The exaggerated quality to both her teenage and elderly Ernestine render them closer to caricature, or to the concept of being young and old rather than how those stages color a particular person. Messing has the daunting task of playing from age 17 to death’s door, and her performance is most grounded and credible somewhere in the middle. Amid them hangs a progression of the moon in orbit, a hammer pounding the metaphor home. The stuff of life seems to have exploded above the room, with a crowded assortment of objects (an umbrella, a rocking horse, a teddy bear) suspended in midair (set design is by Christine Jones). The Roundabout Theatre Company production, from director Vivienne Benesch, also makes a broad visual case for the play’s reverberations beyond the earthly confines of Ernestine’s kitchen. Where a more expansive drama might demonstrate philosophical resonance, here those aspirations are spelled out as briefly as in icing (“Time is a lie”) or in wordy and rushed asides about astrophysics. And sprinkles of humor brighten the overall contrivance of the play’s structure (Crystal Finn makes a whole meal of Ernestine’s daughter-in-law Joan).īut Haidle’s characters are at times so self-conscious about their place in the world that they cease to believably inhabit them. What is life but a series of rituals, and the ache of love and loss and “what ifs”? There’s a tenderness, too, to Haidle’s reflections about seizing moments even as they pass. There’s a truthfulness to the churn and cycle of “Birthday Candles” as a parable of aging. “Yes,” the woman next to me actually responded out loud.) (“Was I ever so young, so self-involved?” asks one character who was precisely that in a previous scene. The actors loop forward to play succeeding generations of Ernestine’s family, as scenes between the young and old trace familiar patterns, often overtly pandering to audience recognition. Symmetry and shorthand govern Haidle’s design, as they do many over-frosted confections. A chime indicates leaps forward in time - ding! Ernestine is 29 years old, 50 years old, old enough that she loses count, as loved ones come and go. “I am a rebel against the universe,” she declares, before settling down with her high school sweetheart (James Earl Jelks) in the house where she grew up, having kids who likewise insist they’ll never be like their parents, and so on. “In the career of my soul, how many times have I turned from wonder?” asks a lofty young Ernestine. From year to year, we’re always in the hours before the party, when Ernestine ( earnestly played by Debra Messing) is preparing the golden cake that her mother teaches her to make on her 17th birthday. The fine line between distilling so-called ordinary life and whipping up airy clichés is all but dissolved in this replay of one woman’s birthday over the course of many decades. But combining staple observations about everyday existence, as the playwright Noah Haidle does with a cosmic hand in “Birthday Candles,” does not guarantee they’ll rise into more than mollifying fluff. Birthdays will tick by like clockwork, a good cake recipe won’t fail and the young will chase their future while elders reminisce. There are some things in life you can count on.
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