Review: BIRTHDAY CANDLES at Curious Theatre

Ernestine Ashworth is a rebel against the universe; she wants to surprise God. Curious Theatre Company’s production of Noah Haidle’s lyrical fugue of a script follows Ernestine from a seventeen-year-old girl vibrating with the anticipation of life to a one-hundred-and-seven-year-old woman who has inhabited nearly every role a woman’s life can hold: wife, mother, widow, grandmother, great-grandmother. Within the tight geography of her kitchen, and through a devotion to the little rituals of life, Ernestine becomes the epic rebel she aspired to be in her youth, transforming ordinary domestic life into something unexpectedly heroic.

The show takes place over a series of Ernestine’s birthdays during which the actor, played with great comfort and depth of soul by Gabriella Cavallero, bakes a cake. The cake not only fills the theatre with the aroma of buttery-goodness, but acts as a touchstone throughout the tide of time illustrating, as Ernestine’s mother, Alice (played by the sonorous, if a little grandiose, Karen Slack) explains, the sugar, butter, flour, and people in Ernestine’s life are both “the humblest ingredients” and “atoms left over from creation — the machinery of the cosmos.” The play’s premise rests on that idea: that ordinary people living ordinary lives are still capable of surprising God, every day.

The play also features a goldfish, Atman, whose three-second memory serves both as Chekhov’s gun for Ernestine’s final scene and a counterpoint to play’s robust internal history. The lighting (designed by Shannon McKinney), occasionally made it feel as though we were in Atman’s fishbowl, as a blue and green Gobo accompanied by tinkly piano music (sound by Jason Ducat), was used to communicate the passage of time, the entrance into death, and Ernestine’s interiority. While this provided a clear break from the direct action of the play, a wider variety of lighting or other theatrical techniques may have evoked greater nuance. Caitlin Ayer’s set, composed of floating kitchen tools suspended above a simple (though functional!) kitchen, effectively framed the central action while indicating the universal expanse.

Performances were strong throughout. Despite Ernestine’s centrality to the plot, the play felt very much like an ensemble piece. Where Slack may have stumbled slightly in the shoes of weighty mother, Alice, she found her stride in Ernestine’s acerbic, brilliant, troubled daughter Madeline bringing humor, snark, and existential fear to the character – I could have watched a whole other play about Madeline. Michael McNeill and Rodney Lizcano’s dueling father-son dynamic felt tense and explosive. McNeill transformed from the cocky high school stud to family villain with great reality. Lizcano played Billy with great compassion and sincerity and his character’s outcome was probably the play’s most successful gut-punch. Devon James was a standout performance. Her anxious…. extremely anxious Joan, who easily could have crossed into annoyance, instead had the audience in stitches largely due to her lived-in-feel which was then explored beautifully in the more heart-felt scenes. Finally, Brian Landis Folkins’ performance as Kenneth was almost too good -- Kenneth’s love story almost poaching the narrative center away from Ernestine. His late-in-life proposal, and Ernestine’s acceptance of it anchored the entire play through Folkins and Cavallero’s vulnerable, honest, tearful emotionality.

All actors played a range of ages from early childhood to late, late adulthood. While the production largely avoided cane-shaking “get off my lawn” physical stereotypes for the older adults, playing younger felt awkward for the majority of the middle-aged cast. Watching these adults bounce about in bomber jackets posing as teenagers occasionally felt like an ill-advised ‘90’s PSA about drug safety. On the whole, however, the passage of time was played with tenderness, and moments such as Folkins and Cavallero’s dance through time showed the actors’ craft as detailed and expansive. The time travel was also greatly aided by Janice Benning Lacek’s minimal but integral costume design with donned and doffed aprons and cardigans greatly benefiting the storytelling.