Debra Messing Heading To Broadway In ‘Birthday Candles’ New York Premiere
Debra Messing will return to Broadway next year in a spring production of playwright Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles. The Roundabout Theatre Company production will mark the New York premiere of the play.
Directed by Vivienne Benesch, Birthday Candles will begin previews April 2, with an opening on April 21 at the Roundabout’s American Airlines Theatre on Broadway. The limited engagement will run through June 21, 2020.
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The Will and Grace and Smash star previously appeared on Broadway in John Patrick Shanley’s play Outside Mullingar opposite Brían F. O’Byrne in 2014.
In the new production, Messing will play Ernestine Ashworth, described by producers as, at first, a young woman who spends her 17th birthday agonizing over her insignificance in the universe. “Soon enough, it’s her 18th birthday. Even sooner, her 41st. Her 70th. Her 101st. Five generations, dozens of goldfish, an infinity of dreams, one cake baked over a century. What makes a lifetime into a life?”
The production will be Haidle’s first on Broadway, but his second Roundabout collaboration: His 2005 black comedy Mr. Marmalade was produced at the company’s Off Broadway Laura Pels venue starring Mamie Gummer and Michael C. Hall.
Haidle probably is best known to film audiences for his 2013 screenplay Stand Up Guys, starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin and produced by Lionsgate and Sidney Kimmel Entertainment.
Additional cast and design team for Birthday Candles will be announced soon.
Messing is represented by 3 Arts Entertainment, The Gersh Agency and Stone, Genow, Smelkinson, Binder & Christopher. Haidle is repped by CAA and Marathon Management.
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