MAKING A LIFE,
ONE BIRTHDAY AT A TIME

A meditation on aging, loss, and
the small rituals that shape a lifetime

Robert Jordan Bailey and Connie Canaday Howard

After leaving Buffalo Theatre Ensemble’s sweet little play Birthday Candles last Sunday, another story that also looks at the sweep of time soon rushed to mind: Thornton Wilder’s The Long Christmas Dinner, a play he completed in 1931 that probes how time affects a family over many decades. What stays the same. What changes. And asking us in the end to assess the significance of the impact. It’s all portrayed from the vantage point of a very stolid and elegant dining room that never alters in the one-act’s timeline of 90 years.

Playwright Noah Haidle confided he “stole” the concept for Birthday Candles from the Wilder classic; in doing so, he ended up creating a very comely homage to the original and to the magical process of aging.

Alexander Wisniewski, Rebecca Cox, Harry Hultgren, Connie Canaday Howard and Lisa Dawn

The action of Birthday Candles, which opened on Broadway in 2022, also takes place in a single room. In Haidle’s interpretation, it’s a standard cookie-cutter kitchen in Grand Rapids, Michigan made warm and welcoming by the soft wood tones and pleasantly reassuring order of Sarah Lewis’s cozy set. Rather than following the progression of a family over generations, though, it zeroes in on one person, Ernestine Ashworth, played consummately here by Connie Canaday Howard.

In 90 minutes, we watch Ernestine grow from a spunky teenager to a time-seasoned matriarch of 100. There are very few cosmetic changes seen in the character over that time frame. Instead, growth and aging happen through the dialog, and Ernestine’s interactions with those around her, throughout her very conventional and benignly remarkable life.

Connie Canaday Howard and Lisa Dawn

Much of the beauty of the play lies in Ernestine’s ordinariness. When we meet her she’s just about to celebrate her 17th birthday with all the braggadocio of the young. Full of high spirits, she’s in the kitchen with her mother, who’s in the middle of making her birthday cake. It’s a recipe that’s been handed down from generation to generation and, according to her mom, has “atoms left over from the cosmos” included in its ingredients. The making of the cake is a crucial component of every stage of Ernestine’s ensuing growth and development.

Perhaps it’s a cultural phenomenon, but at least in this country we tend to think of aging as the exclusive province of those who are visibly old. But in Birthday Candles, directed with such keen sensitivity by Steve Scott, you see how it’s really an act of maturing—gaining insights into the world we live in and adapting to those newly learned realities, things that even babies eventually do. When Ernestine defiantly declares she’ll never succumb to convention and marry, her mother patiently replies, “Let’s have this conversation again when you’re 27.”

Connie Canaday Howard and Lisa Dawn

All but one of the supporting actors play multiple parts, and Lisa Dawn brings an unconscious dignity to Ernestine’s mother; she also does a very fine job playing Ernestine’s snarky daughter. But it’s as the lead character’s mother that she lends the play a note of lasting wisdom.

And it’s while Ernestine is still young that we’re reminded no life is truly conventional after it has absorbed a death. Experiencing profound loss is transformative. You sense the magnitude of its power when Ernestine loses her mother. For her, the residue of death is more existential than spiritual, allowing it to resonate more universally and resoundingly as we observe her. As she matures, she takes on a great deal of her mother’s equanimity.

Robert Jordan Bailey and Connie Canaday Howard

Ernestine does marry and has her own family, yet through it all she is persistently pestered by a neighbor, Kenneth (ensemble member Robert Jordan Bailey), who has harbored a crush on her since their teen years. At one point, her husband Matt catches Kenneth during one of his more overt advances and calls him out for “lusting” after his wife. The incident brings their animosity out into the open. But that dalliance doesn’t turn out to be the reason Matt and Ernestine end up breaking their bond and divorcing. That’s due to a more garden-variety deception and betrayal.

Ahead of their marriage’s disintegration, another gut-wrenching loss strikes. And all along the journey, life goes on. Her kids grow up following arcs similar to their parents. Grandkids arrive. Post-menopausal self-discovery gets mined. And there’s a twist at the end that functions as something of a star turn for Mr. Bailey as Kenneth, still doggedly carrying a torch for Ernestine after a whole slew of decades. Bailey does a splendid job portraying the affably awkward next-door neighbor who patiently pines until his resolve finally wears thin.

Harry Hultgren and Connie Canaday Howard

Harry Hultgren as Ernestine’s husband and Alexander Wisniewski as their son Billy are both compelling, with Wisniewski beautifully showing how life can cruelly recast youth. Rebecca Cox as an insecure in-law and then as a take-charge grandchild deserves like praise for her impressive versatility. But it’s Ms. Howard as Ernestine (along with Haidle’s very intentional script) who gives the show its mettle, making Birthday Candles an essential primer on how to thrive while navigating the treachery of life’s inevitable rapids.

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photos by Rex Howard Photography

Birthday Candles
Buffalo Theatre Ensemble
McAninch Arts Center Playhouse Theatre
425 Fawell Avenue in Glen Elyn, IL
ends on June 7, 2026
for tickets, visit MAC

for more shows, visit Theater In Chicago

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