Debra Messing in Roundabout Theatre Company’s Birthday Candles (Joan Marcus)
However, upon review, they are exceedingly well drawn and acute in each twinkle of time over the fast procession of years that transpose and spool Ernestine’s life. The conflicts which (if the actors don’t enunciate precisely) appear rather sparse. This was tragic because Haidle’s play is brilliant and achingly timeless and heartfelt. In the performance that I saw (Wednesday evening), sometimes the dialogue was muffled and the words, not projected, slung together like a nondescript house salad without dressing. Importantly, every word of the dialogue is paramount and must be heard to appreciate Haidle’s depth of meaning, the poetry, the wisdom, the beauty and the sweet golden threads that bind from one generation to the next. Susannah Flood, Debra Messing in Roundabout Theatre Company’s Birthday Candles (Joan Marcus0 Indeed, Messing as Ernestine is both the icing and the candles, her soul and spirit, which are invisibly lit for eternity. Though birthday candles are never placed on top of the cake, nor is it iced, the title is enough. The dialogue and sounding of a bell for the passage of time clues us in to each generation as they come to celebrate Ernestine’s birthday while she bakes her plain butter cake over the 90 minutes of the play. All these escort Ernestine through the years. With the exception of Messing’s Ernestine, the actors portray multiple generationaly linked roles from mother Alice (Susannah Flood), to great grand daughter Ernie (Susannah Flood) with husband Matt (John Earl Jelks), son Billy (Christopher Livingston), daughter (Susannah Flood), grandchildren and forever sweetheart Kenneth (impeccably played by Enrico Colantoni). John Earl Jelks, Debra Messing in Roundabout Theatre Company’s Birthday Candles (Joan Marcus)
Of course, at that juncture when her work is finished, she moves to another realm in the starlit space/time continuum.
It is then that the audience and Ernestine reflect upon her life’s work and the revelation of Ernestine’s beauty is clarified. Thus, dramatically the play magnifies each character, present in their most vital of moments with Ernestine to heighten her life’s purpose in being herself, a mosaic of moments which come together at the conclusion. Indeed, living one’s life while observing it alters it (a very rough comprehension of the Uncertainty Principle). In this play the adage “life is short” is on steroids. Haidle’s conceit about time and life’s passage in the “twinkling of an eye” (in the play 90 years in 90 minutes with some decades speeded up and others truncated) is most wonderful holistically as the characters live in the moments which they can’t fully appreciate. (L to R): Susannah Flood, Debra Messing in Roundabout Theatre Company’s Birthday Candles (Joan Marcus) Finally, her family spiritually appears and it would seem waits “in the wings” for her to accompany them on the next leg of her journey with them. By her 107th year, she misses everyone and wishes them back as she has each time she gives the one passing (mother, daughter, son, grandchildren, etc.) up to the cosmos. As she moves quickly through time, she “looks through a glass darkly” without understanding, until she finally accepts the love and divinity in herself in her relationships with her family and partners. The most salient one focuses on Ernestine’s spiritual journey as the “every woman” sustaining emotional pain, trauma, loss, moving from weal to woe and finally reconciling a belated love with great joy in her 80s. Haidle’s Birthday Candles, at the Roundabout’s American Airlines Theatre, is poetic and complex with multiple themes.
Enrico Colantoni, Debra Messing in Roundabout Theatre Company’s Birthday Candles (Joan Marcus) And all along, getting married, raising a family, getting a divorce and finding the love of hr life, she has achieved her goal, taking her rightful place in the universe. As she traditionally bakes her birthday cake, over the years, first taught by her mom Alice (Susannah Flood), she gradually understands that she can only realize her dreams by being herself. (L to R): Susannah Flood, Enrico Colantoni, Debra Messing, Christopher Livingston, John Earl Jelks, Crystal Finn in Roundabout Theatre Company’s Birthday Candles (Joan Marcus)īirthday Candles by Noah Haidle, directed by Vivenne Benesch allows Debra Messing to shine as the aging Ernestine who moves from 17 to 107.