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Theater review: Birthday Candles at North Coast Rep
What is life to a goldfish?
C.S. Lewis, among others, referred to eternity as an ever-present now, at one point writing, “the present is the point at which time touches eternity.” Noah Haidle, in his plus ca meme chose play Birthday Candles, cleverly embodies this concept via a creature that apparently does not worry about the future, and reputedly does not remember the past: the goldfish. Well, a little over a hundred goldfish, all of them named Atman, after the Hindu notion of the eternal, unchanging, innermost self.
Set against all of these fish is their owner Ernestine, who opens the play wondering if, at 17, she has wasted her life, and who ends it at something over 90, supremely unconcerned with the question. She begins by declaring that she will wage war against the everyday and surprise God as she prepares to play a gender-swapped version of Lear; she ends reciting Lear’s Act Five plea to Cordelia: “So we’ll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news…and take upon’s the mystery of things, as if we were God’s spies.” Atman endures; Ernestine changes. As does the world around her. People come; people go. Some of the changes you can measure on the door jamb; most you can't.
And yet, her life is touched with an echo of that unchanging eternity, in the form of tradition. The play’s 90-minute runtime is given to the preparation of Ernestine’s birthday cake — or rather, a great many birthday cakes, all in the same kitchen, all of them the same, and in all of which her mother has said she may find “the story of the cosmos.” By the time we get to the second one, her mother has died. By the third, she has two children of her own, the younger of whom asks if, at 17, he has wasted his life. Her daughter angrily insists there are no patterns, but Ernestine does not break with the pattern she has made despite the chaos. So much else is breakable, and breaks: minds, bodies, hearts, families.
The play’s great virtue is its breezy speed. (Life is a but a breath, as Job reminds us.) If it slowed, all its idea-slinging would grow ponderous, and all its sadnesses would prove overwhelming. It would sink instead of skipping along. As it is, it does skip, and in so doing, manages to remain sweet despite the bitterness in the depths. The way a birthday cake — that delicious, cheery herald of impending death — should.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Theater review: Birthday Candles at North Coast Rep
What is life to a goldfish?
Theater review: Birthday Candles at North Coast Rep
What is life to a goldfish?
C.S. Lewis, among others, referred to eternity as an ever-present now, at one point writing, “the present is the point at which time touches eternity.” Noah Haidle, in his plus ca meme chose play Birthday Candles, cleverly embodies this concept via a creature that apparently does not worry about the future, and reputedly does not remember the past: the goldfish. Well, a little over a hundred goldfish, all of them named Atman, after the Hindu notion of the eternal, unchanging, innermost self.
Set against all of these fish is their owner Ernestine, who opens the play wondering if, at 17, she has wasted her life, and who ends it at something over 90, supremely unconcerned with the question. She begins by declaring that she will wage war against the everyday and surprise God as she prepares to play a gender-swapped version of Lear; she ends reciting Lear’s Act Five plea to Cordelia: “So we’ll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court news…and take upon’s the mystery of things, as if we were God’s spies.” Atman endures; Ernestine changes. As does the world around her. People come; people go. Some of the changes you can measure on the door jamb; most you can't.
And yet, her life is touched with an echo of that unchanging eternity, in the form of tradition. The play’s 90-minute runtime is given to the preparation of Ernestine’s birthday cake — or rather, a great many birthday cakes, all in the same kitchen, all of them the same, and in all of which her mother has said she may find “the story of the cosmos.” By the time we get to the second one, her mother has died. By the third, she has two children of her own, the younger of whom asks if, at 17, he has wasted his life. Her daughter angrily insists there are no patterns, but Ernestine does not break with the pattern she has made despite the chaos. So much else is breakable, and breaks: minds, bodies, hearts, families.
The play’s great virtue is its breezy speed. (Life is a but a breath, as Job reminds us.) If it slowed, all its idea-slinging would grow ponderous, and all its sadnesses would prove overwhelming. It would sink instead of skipping along. As it is, it does skip, and in so doing, manages to remain sweet despite the bitterness in the depths. The way a birthday cake — that delicious, cheery herald of impending death — should.