About the work
Birthday Candles is a play by American dramatist Noah Haidle. It was commissioned by Detroit Public Theatre in autumn 2016 and developed further in a workshop at Chautauqua Theater Company in 2017. It premiered on 12 May 2018 at Detroit Public Theatre, directed by Vivienne Benesch. The German translation is by Barbara Christ.
Plot
Ernestine Ashworth bakes the same cake on every one of her birthdays, and the play leaps from one birthday to the next, from age 17 to 101. She wants to escape her mother's narrow domestic life, yet ends up in marriage, motherhood and widowhood, watching children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren come and go. Late in life she comes together with the man whose invitation to the school prom she once turned down. The actress playing Ernestine stays on stage for the entire 90 or so minutes and ages without any outward transformation.
Cultural significance
The Broadway production planned for 2020 was postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic and finally ran at the American Airlines Theatre in 2022; it received two Outer Critics Circle Award nominations, including Outstanding New Broadway Play. Productions in Tel Aviv and Riga and the German-language premiere followed in the same year.