My old heart is cracked – a review of “Birthday Candles”

by Michael Buzzelli

The promise of forever is a lie. Watching love fade and life wither has never been more beautiful than it is in Noah Haidle’s “Birthday Candles.”

Ernestine Ashworth (Robin Walsh) celebrates her seventeenth birthday, and almost every birthday thereafter, in a kitchen in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her best friend, Kenneth (Gavin Lawrence) gifts her with a pet fish, Atman (Atman is the concept in Hinduism and other Indian philosophical traditions that refers to the individual’s true self, soul, or essence).

Kenneth is in love with Ernestine, but she has eyes for Matt (Andrew William Smith).

She chooses Matt and the duo build a family, their son, Billy (José Pérez IV), and daughter, Madeline AKA Athena (Deena Aziz). Eventually, Billy meets his future wife, Joan (Saige Smith).

Time marches on and the actors pop up in different roles. All while Ernestine holds court in the kitchen, baking a birthday cake with flour, eggs, milk and stardust.

The “Birthday Candles” cast shines bright.

Each actor has to play a variety of ages. It’s mesmerizing. Most of them play multiple characters with distinct personality traits.

Walsh never leaves the stage. She is the constant presence who cycles through a full range of emotions, joy, grief, rage, but most of all love. It’s palpable and Walsh exudes it.

Andrew William Smith’s character has a big arc. He plays every stage of life, particularly excelling as a nervous boy and as a dour husband.

The other Smith, Saige, is equally brilliant. She is magnificent. She shines bright with charisma. Her character of Joan is a neurotic but endearing. Her Alex character is unadulterated joy.

Lawrence is a divine. His character of Kenneth gets some of the show’s biggest laughs, but it’s the tender, sweet moments between his character and Walsh’s character that really stand out.

Pérez fits into the role of Billy very well.

Aziz plays a mother and a daughter. Her first scene is the first heartbreak of the play….with many more heartbreaks to follow.

The set, designed by Sasha Jin Schwartz, and lighting, designed by Xuewei (Eva) Hu, adds an extra layer of heartache. At the end of the play, Hu highlights intricate props framed in shadowboxes causing a ripple of sniffles throughout the audience.

There’s a poetry, a rhythm, in profound moments in one person’s life, but Haidle finds wild, uproarious laughter and joy, even in dark places.

The play covers a 100 years in ninety minutes.. The swift movement of years isn’t as jarring as you’d imagine.  Haidle, and director Marc Masterson, find a way to smooth the bursts of time. A turn, a facial expression and the lone piano note transitions us to the next year, and then to another.

“Birthday Candles” hits hard, and will hit harder for people with more candles on their birthday cake.

William Shakespeare once wrote, “Many strokes, though with a little axe, hew down and fell the hardest-timber’d oak.” Each scene in “Birthday Candles” is a quick stroke of the axe, sometimes with riotous laughter, sometimes with unbearable grief.  It’s a remarkably beautiful play.

-MB

“Birthday Candles” runs until March 30th at the City Theatre, 1300 Bingham Street,  Pittsburgh, PA 15203. For more information and tickets, click here.