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Almost a decade after her Broadway debut, Emmy-winner Debra Messing has returned to the New York stage in new play “Birthday Candles,” which taps into her gifts of comedy and sentimentality. The first play by Noah Haidle to hit Broadway, “Birthday Candles” centers on Messing’s character Ernestine and unspools over nearly a century, as scenes focus on her ritual of baking a cake on her birthday over the course of her lifetime, chronicling her joys and losses. The Roundabout Theatre Company production, which also boasts John Earl Jelks, Enrico Colantoni, and others, opened at the American Airlines Theatre on April 10 under the direction of Vivienne Benesch.

This new drama received a divided reception from critics, who thought the grand aspirations of the work felt a touch under-baked. In a positive notice, Chris Jones (Chicago Tribune) calls the show “wonderful,” “wise and sad.” Touting the sophistication of Haidle’s ideas,...

Birthday Candles, Noah Haidle’s Broadway dramedy starring Debra Messing as a woman who, over the course of the play’s 90 minutes ages from 17 to 107, has just about all the right ingredients for the poignant, funny and life-affirming experience it sets out to be. If everything doesn’t always come together just as it should, well, even an imperfect cake is better than no cake at all.

Opening tonight at the American Airlines Theatre, the Roundabout Theatre Company production of Birthday Candles casts the always likable Messing, having already won us over from her years on Will & Grace, as Ernestine, whom we first meet on her 17th birthday as she joins her mother in a yearly tradition of cake-baking.

“Eggs, butter, sugar, salt,” says mother Alice, reciting a little speech that itself will become part of Ernestine’s lifetime birthday tradition. “The humblest ingredients. But when you turn back and look far enough,...

John Earl Jelks, currently appearing in the HBO Max series Love Life, has joined the previously announced Debra Messing and Enrico Colantoni in the cast of the upcoming Broadway production of Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles.

The Roundabout Theatre Company production, which begins previews March 18 and opens April 10, was originally set to debut in spring 2020 but was postponed due to the Covid shutdown. At the time, Andre Braugher was set to co-star with Messing and Colantoni.

The limited engagement of Birthday Candles will run through May 29 at the American Airlines Theatre. Vivienne Benesch directs.

Jelks is known to Broadway audiences for his role in Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat (2017) and his Tony-nominated 2007 performance in August Wilson’s Radio Golf. He had previously appeared in Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean. Other stage work includes Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Head of Passes, co-starring Phylicia Rashad, at the Public Theater Off Broadway and L.

Broadway’s Roundabout Theatre Company has unveiled its post-shutdown production schedule, with both the much-anticipated revival of Caroline, Or Change starring Sharon D Clarke and the Broadway debut of Alice Childress’ 1955 play Trouble in Mind both beginning previews in October.

Birthday Candles, Noah Haidle’s new play starring Debra Messing, will begin previews in March, and the previously announced revival of 1776 will bow in fall 2022.

The Roundabout lineup was announced by Todd Haimes, Artistic Director/CEO.

In addition to the not-for-profit’s Broadway lineup, Roundabout also announced scheduling for its Off Broadway slate: Mansa Ra’s …what the end will be and Dave Harris’ Exception to the Rule (both April 2022) and Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers (July 2022).

See below for specific dates and descriptions.

The Roundabout announcements are the latest in a rush of openings and reopenings since New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last week that Broadway could reopen...

The Broadway revival of the Tony Kushner-Jeanine Tesori musical Caroline, or Change and the New York premiere of Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles starring Debra Messing are the latest productions to announce postponements until 2021, and they’ll be joined on the Roundabout Theatre Company line-up with the Broadway debut of Alice Childress’ 1955 play Trouble in Mind, to directed by Charles Randolph-Wright.

The postponements – plans to open both Caroline, Or Change and Birthday Candles this Spring were scuttled by Broadway’s Covid-19 shutdown – follow this week’s announcements that The Music Man, Flying Over Sunset, American Buffalo and The Minutes are now targeting Spring 2021 premieres. Birthday Candles, with Messing, will open in Fall 2021.

“With the ongoing uncertainty of the pandemic and with concern for our artists, staff, and audiences, we have determined that we will not be able to reopen our theaters this fall,” said Roundabout Artistic Director/CEO Todd Haimes.

Exclusive: Will & Grace star Debra Messing and Mandana Dayani, co-founder of nonpartisan organization I Am A Voter, are launching a podcast to shine a spotlight on people who have challenged the status quo.

The pair are launching The Dissenters on May 21 and the first season of the show will feature 20 episodes.

Messing and Dayani spoke to Deadline about the move, how they chose the people that inspired them and why they wanted to get into the medium of podcasting.

The first season will include guests such as Glennon Doyle, founder of Together Rising, Adam Schiff, Jane Fonda and Patrisse Cullors.

It is produced by Dear Media, Messing, Dayani and Erica First.

Messing told Deadline, “We’re both nerds, we’re very much into activism and organizing and we realized all of these people that re inspiring us, we wanted to share with other people. we wanted to meet our heroes.

Broadway’s Caroline, or Change, the revival of the Jeanine Tesori-Tony Kushner musical starring Sharon D Clarke, and Birthday Candles, the Noah Haidle play starring Debra Messing, have been postponed until Fall. The Roundabout Theatre Company productions had been set to open this Spring.

Clarke and Messing will remain with the productions.

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“Our desire is to provide certainty and confidence to our artists, staff and audiences that we will come back from this hiatus with a full season,” said Roundabout Artistic Director/CEO Todd Haimes in a statement. “We are committed to the future of the theatre and its long-term sustainability in this crisis. Moving planned productions to dates certain in the fall protects...

André Braugher has been cast opposite the previously announced Debra Messing in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s upcoming Broadway production of Noah Haidle’s play Birthday Candles.

Also newly announced for the production Enrico Colantoni in his Broadway debut, Crystal Finn (The Tick), Susannah Flood (Roundabout’s The Cherry Orchard) and Christopher Livingston.

Directed by Vivienne Benesch, the New York premiere of Birthday Candles begins previews on Thursday, April 2 at the American Airlines Theatre, with an official opening on Tuesday, April 21. The limited engagement runs through Sunday, June 21.

Braugher, currently co-starring alongside Andy Samberg in Brooklyn Nine- Nine, will be making his Broadway debut. He has won two Emmy Awards, for FX’s Thief and his breakthrough role on NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street.

The play follows a woman named Ernestine (played by Will...

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.

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...

Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation Sdcf announces that Vivienne Benesch, of Playmakers Repertory Theater Chapel Hill, Nc, is the recipient of the 2017 Zelda Fichandler Award.