‘Birthday Candles’ Broadway Review: Debra Messing Bakes Up A Life In New Dramedy

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Birthday Candles, Noah Haidle’s Broadway dramedy starring Debra Messing as a woman who, over the course of the play’s 90 minutes ages from 17 to 107, has just about all the right ingredients for the poignant, funny and life-affirming experience it sets out to be.

If everything doesn’t always come together just as it should, well, even an imperfect cake is better than no cake at all.Opening tonight at the American Airlines Theatre, the Roundabout Theatre Company production of Birthday Candles casts the always likable Messing, having already won us over from her years on Will & Grace, as Ernestine, whom we first meet on her 17th birthday as she joins her mother in a yearly tradition of cake-baking.“Eggs, butter, sugar, salt,” says mother Alice, reciting a little speech that itself will become part of Ernestine’s lifetime birthday tradition. “The humblest ingredients.

But when you turn back and look far enough, you see atoms left over from creation.”But even the existential qualities of cake-baking can’t quite satisfy the young Ernestine, who at 17 wants so much more than is available within the confines of a Grand Rapids kitchen. “I am a rebel against the universe,” she dramatically proclaims to her mom and the world. “I will wage war with the everyday.

I am going to surprise God!”Within minutes, the play will jump ahead, fairly seamlessly, to Ernestine’s 18th birthday, then other years through newlywed days, young motherhood, middle-age and old age, love, loss, harmony and tragedy, each scene featuring the various characters in Ernestine’s life – six actors playing 12 roles in all – as they gather for the annual cake-baking tradition in a sort of same time next year depiction of one woman’s ordinary, extraordinary