Barbara Chisholm Photo by Mikki Schaffner

Questions about a meaningful life repeatedly bubble up throughout Haidle's 90-minute play as Ernestine performs the annual ritual of birthday cake-baking. Chisholm conducts the process steadily, a thread that binds together the 90 years that she travels to the age of 107. As time passes–the lighting (designed by Allen Hahn) dims then brightens when a button of musical sound announces yet another birthday–a parade of characters intersect with Ernestine. Haidle's cast description says that she "will be a daughter, a girlfriend, a wife, a mother, a friend, an aunt, a mother-in-law, a widow, a second wife, a grandmother, a great grandmother, and a great great grandmother."

Beyond Chisholm, just one actor plays a singular role: Bill Timoney as Kenneth, her growing-up boy-next-door neighbor with a lifelong crush on Ernestine that persists from childhood to senior years. Danan returns as Ernestine's troubled daughter Madeleine and her beloved granddaughter Ernie. Adam Poss is Ernestine's thoughtless, self-centered husband Matt and later is William, a free-spirited teenage grandson. Will Allan is her musical but slow-to-start son Billy and also John, an unrelated but caring man Ernestine encounters in old age. Mierka Girten is Joan, Billy's anxiety ridden girlfriend, then wife; she also plays Joan's forthright daughter Alex, and John's grumpy "domestic partner" Beth.

If that sounds complex (it is), it's never confusing as performed, each actor taking on different physicalities as they come and go through Ernestine's existence. Chisholm's Ernestine keeps at the baking process–the sweet smell of the cake in the oven eventually pervades the Rosenthal Shelterhouse Theatre–but she's also the glue that keeps everyone's stories spinning. Several characters depart sadly (in fact, they literally leave the stage according to a stage direction, stepping "out of time, out of the play" via an actual theater exit door that snaps shut sharply), while others spin in and out of the action. Additionally, Haidle has written lines with words such as "cosmos" that echo across generations and characters.

Billy begins as "one of the worst musicians in the world." At first, we hear him plunking away on the piano off stage, but he steadily improves. Sound designer Thomas Dixon also composed the evocative melody that Billy practices, one that becomes something truly lovely over time. Ernestine's high school performance as "Queen Lear" affords several heartfelt recollections of Shakespearean dialogue: "So we'll live/And pray, and sing, and tell old tales/And laugh at gilded butterflies." The changes wrought by time's passage are the subtext and continuity of Birthday Candles.

Chisholm navigates Ernestine's life stages subtly and effortlessly. (She's become a Playhouse regular, playing roles as disparate as the obsessive Annie in Misery and the humor columnist Erma Bombeck.) She never leaves the stage, so her 90 years of aging must be implied simply. Her animated energy in the first scene settles into confident warmth and loving reassurance during Ernestine's middle age. Her heated reaction to marital infidelity leads to an explosion of self-assurance when she becomes an entrepreneur as a senior, establishing a bakery, Ernestine's Just Desserts. Even as Chisholm embodies the character's elderly existence, her physicality never slips into clichés: Instead, she moves more slowly and deliberately, but with conviction. It's a remarkable, believable performance.

There's one further character: A goldfish that Kenneth presents to Ernestine on her 17th birthday that he's named "Atman." He explains that the name is a Sanskrit word for "self ... but not a personal self, but as the divinity within yourself." Ernestine reacts with "Hell of a name for a goldfish," and Kenneth, who's awkwardly geeky, replies, "Go big or go home." That divinity is the subtle essence that Ernestine yearns for in the face of the drudgery of everyday existence, even on special days like birthday. But Kenneth reminds her of a school report she gave about goldfish, noting that they have a three-second memory span. "Can you imagine that?," he asks. "Three. Two. One. Boom. Then the world begins anew." New chances abound, and Kenneth is persistently present throughout Ernestine's life, always hopeful and eventually landing in the right place.

As the moments–and years–of Ernestine's life unspooled, I found myself remembering the onetime concept of "speed dating." But playwright Haidle's "speed living" script and director Joanie Schultz' lovely staging suffused with humor and poignant events make for an emotional tale that surely connects with audiences. Using the metaphor of mixing the essential cake ingredients to achieve a sweet result, Birthday Candles is a unique reminder of how love, ritual and repetition shape our lives.

Birthday Candles runs through May 18, 2025, at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, 962 Mt. Adams Circle in Eden Park, adjacent to Mt. Adams, Cincinnati OH. For tickets and information, please visit cincyplay.com or call 513-421-3888.