And always bewilderment at the absences and the swiftness in which they – and everything else in life – arrive. Messing, in particular, captures that bundle of emotions brought on by loss, sudden or otherwise: pain, bewilderment, anger, and slow, slow resignation. That joke-lament gets to the very heart of what works best in Birthday Candles – the acknowledgement of never-ending loss, whether through death or divorce or hard feelings or the simple act of drifting away. “Yeah, there is,” Kenneth or Ernestine will then say to the other. A running joke – or lament, or both – between Ernestine and the doting Kenneth concerns the absurdity of acquaintances asking, following a death in the family, “If there’s anything I can do.” We see all of the characters age scene by scene, some will fall to illness or personal strife, none – and this hardly needs a spoiler alert, given the play’s premise – will outlive Ernestine. Over the course of the play’s 90-minute lifetime, we’ll meet (and, more often than not, bond with) Ernestine’s loving mom, troubled daughter and vivacious great-granddaughter (all played by the terrific Susannah Flood, especially effective as the caustic, deeply sad daughter) her beau and husband Matt (John Earl Jelks) her lovestruck classmate, neighbor and seeming missed opportunity Kenneth (Enrico Colantoni) sensitive but defiant son Billy (Christopher Livingston) nervous daughter-in-law Joan and forthright granddaughter Alex (both played by the very funny Crystal Finn) and a few others who come and go.
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Manhole Cover Explosions In Times Square Rattle Tourists Booms Followed Opening Night Of Broadway's 'Birthday Candles' 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. If everything doesn’t always come together just as it should, well, even an imperfect cake is better than no cake at all. 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.
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