Birthday Candles Broadway Reviews

Repetition can make magic happen: repeat a word or a phrase enough times and it breathes new life, fresh meaning. Or repetition can strip language until all that's left are empty rhythms and sounds. Words are funny like that. Noah Haidle's 'Birthday Candles,' which opened on Broadway Sunday night at the American Airlines Theater, tries to build poignancy and depth through moments that repeat like a record needle stuck in a groove. Instead, this Roundabout Theater Company production gets caught in a superficial cycle of wannabe profundities and emotional pantomimes.

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.

The stolen moments of the play-Messing letting Ernestine silently imbibe the world and events around her-make the most impact, as well as its affecting denouement (in which Finn, again, is a standout), when Ernestine attempts to finally finish the cake (and my, how you will panic over her lifting a container of flour). As it confronts the big and small questions of existence and time itself, Birthday Candles itself proves simultaneously over-baked and under-baked, but its performers ensure it is served warm.

There are times when director Vivienne Benesch's production, staged on a single setting from Christine Jones, does not fully exploit the epic, metaphysical sense of the writing; transitions are marked by annoying sound cues when we'd be fully aware of what transpires without them. Some moments are rushed, others too broad. But those really are minor quibbles in a truly must-see show that is fully successful when it comes to everything that really matters. Messing didn't pick some revival or obvious showcase for her comedic chops: she strives mightily and beautifully to find her way through a wise and sad drama, just like the character she plays.

In Noah Haidle's thin and drippy Birthday Candles, the earnest Ernestine (Debra Messing) prepares and bakes a cake in 90 minutes of real time, as 90 years of her life pass by. A smell of baking thus wafts through the theatre, providing one of the production's few whiffs of reality. Haidle means to suggest that the specific is universal- Christine Jones's set is a kitchen that floats in the vastness of the cosmos, with household objects hanging over it like stars- but he forgets to be specific. It's Thornton Wilder without the wildness or the thorns.

Haidle's plays (his better 'Smokefall' did not receive the production it deserved when it played New York back in 2016) have a way of convincing every audience member they've been written just for them. 'Birthday Candles,' at its best, bubbles up our own cherished and difficult memories of the people in our lives who've come and gone.

The impressive acting, practical set and tailored direction blend well to tell a story that could easily feel flat and predictable. Vivienne Benesch's direction readily elevates Haidle's script, exploring the emotional and unpredictable time-lapse tale of Ernestine's birthdays over the course of 90 years.

Too much rests on Messing's shoulders, and it's simply the wrong play for her gifts. She has some odd ideas about playing young - her 17-year-old Ernestine has the physicality of a stomping kindergartner - and during the play's long middle she's inert, unable to strike sparks from her family. Even in moments of heightened emotion, Messing seems disconnected from those around her, twinkling at her children but not quite meeting their eyes. She's strongest when Ernestine gets into her nineties, because Messing's faraway gaze and abstracted air begin to take on poignancy. What is she seeing? What can she hear? Maybe there's some other life clamoring for her attention. Or maybe her mind is finally up there amid the constellation of lifetime things. Perhaps she's finding her place in the expanding universe, traveling farther and faster away.

Haidle is big on concepts. For his play 'Smokefall,' he told the story of four generations of one family, and even took us inside the womb to explore the development of two characters. In 'Birthday Candles,' he visits the character of Ernestine (Messing) on several of her birthdays, from age 17 to well into old age. Since 'Birthday Candles' is a one-act play clocking in at around 100 minutes, Haidle's writing involves major compression of time. Some of those birthdays last 10 minutes; others are covered in seconds.

Despite the play's universe-skimming ambitions, there's also a narrowness to its imagination of what life can and could be. Ernestine follows a path of least resistance; though she has regrets, 'Birthday Candles' isn't a critique of conformity, or the broader social forces that led her there (she is a woman happily baking a cake, year after year, for more than half a century, after all). The play rather reinforces the heteronormative fantasy that fulfillment comes in recognizable forms - just be careful which man you choose. It's a bitter, if obvious, pill served with enough sugar to rot a full mouth of teeth.

Noah Haidle is no Thornton Wilder. 'Birthday Candles' has its warmhearted and amusing moments, but it's essentially a middle brow entertainment that tries too hard to be ethereal, poignant, and poetic. If Haidle's script isn't as impressive as it's trying to be, director Vivienne Benesh makes the best of it, with an appealing production that is beautifully designed and wonderfully acted by a nimble six-member cast who take an appropriately understated approach. The heart of the production is the performance by Debra Messing, who never leaves the stage, neither changing costume nor applying makeup, as she credibly ages 90 years over 90 minutes, using a shift in voice and posture.

For many, Birthday Candles will no doubt prove deeply moving, especially since it inevitably deals with so many relatable issues for both young and old. And if I'm being honest, there were moments that got to me as well, proving that there's still something resembling a heart beneath this curmudgeonly exterior. But then, I've always found cheap music extraordinarily potent.

There might be life beyond the walls of Ernestine's expansive Grand Rapids, Michigan, kitchen, but Birthday Candles isn't interested in it. (Your first clue that Birthday Candles doesn't take place in the real world as we know it comes from Christine Jones' fantastical set: pots and pans, musical instruments, stuffed animals, and assorted bric-a-brac hanging from above-a lifetime of memories scattered across the sky like stardust.) Ernestine only grows older; she doesn't really grow.

Did you hear the one about the woman who lived a life? She had ups, downs, outlived some around her, was survived by others. In case you forgot the basic trajectory of human existence, a self-satisfied little play called Birthday Candles opened tonight at the American Airlines Theatre. The Broadway debut of playwright Noah Haidle, it has almost nothing to say about the grand existential themes it barks throughout its brisk 90 minutes. It's hard to imagine why Messing took on this role, which only plays into her strengths as an actor a handful of times, when the script offers up sitcom-style setups.

Still, much of the play consists of a ticking off of biographical events. By necessity or by design, it is incumbent on members of the audience to find a personal connection to the ups and downs of Ernestine's life. Debra Messing generally has too little to work with, only coming into her own as Ernestine herself comes into her own. The rest of the cast, playing multiple roles, all do what they can with their parts, but mostly they are stuck with one-dimensional attributes, and neither they nor director Vivienne Benesch are able bring them fully to life.