In surreal plays like his 2016 “ Smokefall,” Haidle aspires to mix multigenerational family drama and poetic musings. In some ways this reach for the cosmic comes with the territory. Ingredients for the birthday cake include not just the usual pantry staples but “stardust, the machinery of the cosmos” and “atoms left over from creation.” Characters recite lines from “King Lear” so as to share the mad monarch’s rantings about the nature of life and the passage of time.Įven a poor goldfish, a nonunion actor in a round bowl on the kitchen table, works his tail off as a stand-in for what Kenneth calls “the divinity within yourself.” “Birthday Candles” nearly suffocates in such grandiloquent pronouncements and existential metaphors. It’s unsettling, but for anyone who has seen family affected by illness, such transitions feel gauche a quick change in posture and a handful of lines meant to represent the monumental losses we reckon with in, as Ernestine calls it, “the daily human errand.” We watch one character suddenly going slack, his face twisting and his hands stiffening in place, as if suffering a stroke. (“You’re a shadow in a suit posing as a human, you should be ashamed of yourself,” sneer the teenage avatars of two generations, in one of the play’s funnier repetitions.) And the middle-aged adults wilt into the weary postures of seniors, with their sighs and ailments, right before our eyes.Īs Ernestine shuffles closer to a century of birthdays, the metamorphoses lean into emotional manipulation. The teens, slouching from one end of the stage to the next, are unbearably self-righteous. Vivienne Benesch’s direction exaggerates the methodical sentimentality of Haidle’s script, allowing broad, clichéd gestures to do shorthand work. Most of the cast, particularly Messing, who delivers an awkward caricature of a teen and then the exaggerated hand-wringing and dithering warble of an old woman, struggle in the sunrise and sunset years. These shifts are tough work for the actors, who must often convey their characters’ varied ages in succinct lines: a lifetime in just a few minutes. At some points it becomes a hassle to see the view from Ernestine’s family tree, given how quickly figures in her life disappear, and how children transform into grandchildren, then great-grandchildren. Down below, though, we are dutifully following an unrelenting parade of progeny embodied, “ Lehman Trilogy”-style, by Flood, Finn, Jelks and Livingston. It’s there that we neatly see how the personal can meet the universal. It’s her birthday, and her mother (Susannah Flood) is making golden butter cake it’s a tradition, one that Ernestine clings to for years, baking the same cake for herself over 90 birthdays, which we live through with her in the course of the 90-minute play. I am going to surprise God!” So declares the precocious 17-year-old Ernestine ( Debra Messing) as the show opens. Instead, this Roundabout Theater Company production gets caught in a superficial cycle of wannabe profundities and emotional pantomimes. 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. Or repetition can strip language until all that’s left are empty rhythms and sounds. She’s also the voice of Laeticia Saltier on Julian Koster’s radio show, The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air) produced and distributed by NightVale Presents and WNYC.įlood was born in New York City, grew up in Manhattan, went to high school in Santa Monica and graduated summa cum laude from UC Berkeley.Repetition can make magic happen: repeat a word or a phrase enough times and it breathes new life, fresh meaning. Burns at Playwrights Horizons and As You Like It (directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan) at The Public’s Delacorte Theater in Central Park, among others. premieres of The Effect and Tribes (both directed by MacArthur “Genius” Grant winner David Cromer) at Barrow Street Theatre, Scenes From A Marriage (directed by Tony Award winner Ivo Van Hove) and Love & Information (written by Caryl Churchill and directed by James MacDonald) at New York Theatre Workshop, Mr. Her work off-Broadway includes lead roles in the U.S. In 2016, Flood made her Broadway debut opposite Diane Lane, Harold Perrineau, John Glover and Joel Grey in The Roundabout Theatre’s revival of The Cherry Orchard. Her additional television credits include a recurring role on Chicago Fire, as well as guest-starring roles on Law & Order: SVU and Hulu’s Deadbeat. Susannah Flood took on her first major role on television as Kate Littlejohn on ABC’s For The People.
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