Debra Messing (Will & Grace) returns to the stage as Ernestine Ashworth, who spends her 17th birthday agonizing over her insignificance in the universe.
Soon enough, it’s her 18th birthday. Even sooner, her 41st. Her 70th. Her 101st. Five generations, dozens of goldfish, an infinity of dreams, one cake baked over a century. What makes a lifetime…into a life?
A writer of "freewheeling ambition" (Charles Isherwood, The New York Times), Noah Haidle makes his Broadway debut with a poignant new play as fearless in scope as it is tremendous in heart.
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If only the play gave Messing time to settle, we might have been allowed to experience more of the actress' range. The action moves so fast that emotional moments pop up out of nowhere, and Ernestine's responses ring hollow. When she's betrayed by her husband, the bell tolls to the next year before the audience has had enough time to grasp onto what just happened to our heroine and how she feels. Still, judging by the sniffs in the audience by the play's conclusion, it's clear Birthday Candles landed with some. Personally, I was more upset about the cake's fate than Ernestine's.
What the play doesn't quite manage is balance of a more stylistic bent, moving fitfully between naturalism and a more fabulist approach, the latter marked by some rather twee flourishes (a goldfish or, rather, a 100-year series of goldfishes, all named Atman, which, we're told, is a Sanskrit word for 'the divinity within yourself.' Despite whatever missteps, though, Messing and the rest of the cast nicely convey the spectrum of emotions that a life's sweep encompasses, from happy times to sad (at the reviewed performance, audience sobs and sniffles were as audible as the laughter). Not even a tacked-on final birthday scene that strains credulity can sour the simple, icing-sweet pleasures of Birthday Candles.
2022 | Broadway |
Roundabout Theatre Company Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2022 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Debra Messing |
2022 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding New Broadway Play | Birthday Candles |
2021 | Theatre World Awards | Theatre World Awards | Enrico Colantoni |
2021 | Theatre World Awards | Theatre World Awards | Crystal Finn |
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