![]() Many years later, that’s when her son Billy (Christopher Livingston) brings home his jumpy future wife Joan (Crystal Finn, in a roaringly funny Broadway debut), who ends up hyperventilating into a utensil crock after an embarrassing remark about Finish Me Off nail polish. The following year, while Ernestine is making that very cake, she refuses an invite to the prom from Kenneth ( Veronica Mars’ Enrico Colantoni), and accepts one from Matt (John Earl Jelks), her eventual husband. “Because if Donna Kaplan gets the lead in another school play I’ll die.” Spoiler: Ernestine does not die. The machinery of the cosmos…” She’s much more concerned with prepping for her King Lear-sorry, Queen Lear, “a feminist interpretation”-audition. “Atoms left over from creation,” says her mother, Alice (Susannah Flood). At age 17, the “recipe” isn’t very important to Ernestine. We watch Ernestine age from 17 to 107-through marriage, parenthood, grandparenthood, and beyond-marking every birthday with from-scratch Golden Yellow Butter Cake. That’s how invested theatergoers are in the creation of this confection. Don’t be surprised when you hear gasps throughout the audience. Eventually, she brings the finished product out of the oven-it smells heavenly!-and she dumps it into the trash. The odd thing about the eccentric but engaging Birthday Candles-one of many odd things about Noah Haidle’s new play, now on Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre-is that no one ever eats any cake.Įrnestine Ashworth ( Will & Grace star Debra Messing) spends the entire show making her signature birthday cake: dutifully cracking eggs, leveling flour and baking powder, measuring milk and vanilla, creaming butter and sugar, and so on. Enrico Colantoni and Debra Messing in Birthday Candles.
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