Drama Queens, a five-star arts journal focusing on female artists

BIRTHDAY CANDLES review  © 2022 by Carol W. Berman

BIRTHDAY CANDLES (2022) by Noah Haidle explores the life of a character called Ernestine (played by a wonderful Debra Messing) from 18 years to 100 years old.  Each passing year or sometimes decade is introduced by a bell.  Ernestine is always in the kitchen (the only set) trying to make a birthday cake.  Various characters, i.e., her mother, her husband, her children, grandchildren, etc., pass through her life.  At first, I considered the play mawkishly sentimental and too stereotypical, but I soon realized Haidle was employing all these devices and characters to make a point about the brevity of existence and the repetition of life patterns throughout the years.  How life passes in a flash, how each generation experiences the same traumas of birth, relationships, and death.  Ernestine is the perfect mother.  She is always loving, patient, thankful.  The only time she was even slightly angry was when her husband, Matt, strayed from the marriage and had an affair.  Even then she was silent and unrealistically stoic.  She even nurses him when he gets dementia.  The audience loved her and gave her a standing ovation the night I was there. 

The play is a parable based on Thornton Wilder’s THE LONG CHRISTMAS DINNER (1931) in which we witness 90 years and are accelerated through ninety Christmas dinners in the Bayard home.  We see changes in customs and manners during this time and the growth of the Bayard family – all typical of American life.  (spoiler alert): The ending of BIRTHDAY CANDLES is especially poignant when we find Ernestine in the kitchen as usual, trying to prepare her birthday cake, but we soon discover that she has escaped from a nursing home to return to her house which now harbors a young couple.  She finally dies and sees her mother and the rest of the family pass before her eyes.