‘Birthday Candles’ at People’s Light is a charming existential ride with a side of butter cake

The equally hilarious and heart-wrenching play Birthday Candles threads together the protagonist Ernestine’s birthdays from 17 to 101, celebrated with her mother’s golden butter cake, five generations of family, countless rituals, and one goldfish.

Directed by Abigail Adams, People’s Light’s executive artistic director emerita, Noah Haidle’s stunning play weaves together all these facets into the fabric of Ernestine’s (Teri Lamm) ordinary and extraordinary life.

A now uncommon practice in a post-COVID world, People’s Light and Adams start the show without a preshow announcement alerting audiences to the beginning of the show.

Instead, the actor Claire Inie-Richards, who plays Alice, Madeline, and Ernie, (Ernestine’s mother, daughter, and great-granddaughter), enters scenic designer Daniel Zimmerman’s understated and charming kitchen set and begins to wash her hands.

The rest of the cast, Kevin Bergen (Kenneth), Jacob Orr (Billy, John), Ian Merrill Peakes (Matt, William), and Julianna Zinkel (Joan, Alex, Beth) take seats on the edges of the playing space, where we can watch them watching the show.

This feels awkward at first, with actors exiting the space as their character and then returning with a neutral stance and expression, often moving to a costume rack to switch out a jacket before returning to their seat. But their presence quickly becomes a poetic and comforting presence for Ernestine, and for us.

The “offstage” actors facilitate the jumps from one birthday to the next by striking singing bowls, accompanied by a subtle lighting change, indicating the passage of another year. Barring some accessories, characters remain in the same base costumes that, with the help of Zimmerman’s set, reinforce a timeless quality to the play’s world.

Through the play, we watch Ernestine experience love, loss, grief, and joy as her family, ever growing and changing, celebrates her life as she attempts to be a “rebel against the universe.”

While audiences may come in expecting a poignant and charming family drama, the existential nature of Haidle’s text may come as a surprise. Lamm’s Ernestine grapples with her destiny, purpose, and place in the cosmos.

The lyrical, earnest quality of Haidle’s dialogue and characters is at first quaint, with many laugh lines spread within the first 45 minutes, but the artful shift into the more complex questions leaves the audience with tears in their eyes by the end of the play.

Birthday Candles packs an emotional punch that will stay with audiences long after the house lights come back up.

(Community/Arts) Ernestine celebrates her birthdays, from 17 to 101, with her mother’s golden butter cake, five generations of family, countless rituals, and one goldfish. And through it all, she question her place in the universe.

⌚️ Through May 4,📍39 Conestoga Road, Malvern, 🌐 peopleslight.org

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