Warm ‘Birthday Candles’ on Broadway has Debra Messing age 90 years
11.04.2022 - 05:41
/ nypost.com
There are flickers of beauty in the new play “Birthday Candles,” which opened Sunday night on Broadway.Noah Haidle’s warm-but-flawed dramedy, with great feeling and occasional poignancy, takes us through 90 years of an average Michigan woman’s life. 90 minutes, At the American Airlines Theatre, 227 W 42nd Street.Of course, when you condense nine decades into an hour and a half, both bliss and tragedy arrive faster than spam emails on a Monday. The name of Ernestine’s hometown, Grand Rapids, describes her rocky, unpredictable road well. After every victory for Ernestine (Debra Messing) — an invitation to prom, the birth of a child, the starting of a new business — a crushing blow soon follows.
Deaths, cheating and health scares are all weathered with Midwestern steeliness that hides immense pain.What really packs a punch, though, are her smaller losses. During one scene, we race through a series of her birthday celebrations in her eighties and nineties over a matter of seconds.
The parties start out big and boisterous, and by the end of the sequence, no one is visiting her house anymore. That all too truthful observation about aging makes you want to run out and call grandma.The play begins when Ernestine is 17, and is learning how to make a birthday cake with her mother — a tradition she will repeat every single year.
These first several minutes are cloying. The actress overdoes it playing a teen, and Haidle writes partly in metaphysical mumbo-jumbo that can be hit-and-miss. For instance, her second line is, “In the career of my soul, how many times have I turned from wonder?” That’s a bit heady for a show’s first 30 seconds.But “Birthday Candles,” which is set in one kitchen, shakes off the pretentiousness when
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