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In the new Broadway dramaBirthday Candles,the playwright Noah Haidle hopscotches rapidly through time.
It takes him about 90 minutes to travel 90 years.
But theres a sense of hours lost here, rather than a life counted up.
I think if youd never seen a play before in your life youd still thinkthis rings a bell.
Those other dramas handle peoples fates lightly.
Long-horizon plots tend to be a little melancholy, but the timeline prevents them from being sentimental about mortality.
Instead it keeps its attention firmly on Ernestine.
That isnt to say that it cant be occasionally moving.
Ernestine suffers a lot as she grows older.
When people die, they walk into the void behind Christine Joness kitchen set.
As their cynosure, Ernestine herself remains a cipher, full of portentous sayings but little real thought.
But there are stardusty metaphors and windy pronouncements everywhere.
Characters all return to Ernestines mantra, The genius of a party is to offer people a rest.
A rest from the daily human errand to travel morning until night.
With language, as with cakes, it depends on how sweet your tooth is.
(Haidles comic writing for her is his strongest.)
Hes the only one who tries to claw his way back.
But grace notes cant sustain a production.
Too much rests on Messings shoulders, and its simply the wrong play for her gifts.
What is she seeing?
What can she hear?
Maybe theres some other life clamoring for her attention.
Or maybe her mind is finally up there amid the constellation of lifetime things.
Perhaps shes finding her place in the expanding universe, traveling farther and faster away.
Birthday Candlesis at the American Airlines Theatre.
