#SUSANNAH FLOOD LAW AND ORDER SERIES#

We also are forced to realize that people we had to come to think of as permanent fixtures of our consciousness walk out of the doors of our lives, their departures unanticipated and often traumatic.

#SUSANNAH FLOOD LAW AND ORDER SERIES#

Here’s what “Birthday Candles” is all about: As we age, we come to see that life is a series of losses and our happiness largely depends on how we deal with them. The first indication of his rich second act as a writer, born of his own challenges, was “Smokefall,” a beautiful family drama set (like “Birthday Candles”) in Grand Rapids that premiered at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 2014 and clearly was the work of a playwright who had come to understand one of life’s most profound truths. But his life took various challenging turns, his career stalled, personal issues accumulated and he ended up back in Michigan, living with his parents. The writer Noah Haidle once was a wunderkind New York playwright, the kind Broadway loves. No young person could have written this play the pain and discoveries of the author are all over every beautifully written line. For 90 minutes at the Roundabout Theatre on Broadway, face masks double as a means by which an emotionally wrought audience can wipe its eyes. The wonderful new drama “Birthday Candles,” which stars Debra Messing of “Will and Grace” fame, is a perfect example. If only Broadway, always obsessed with the young, better understood what it is missing.

For this and other reasons, older writers come with a built-in advantage when it comes to new plays. In “Three Tall Women,” the great playwright Edward Albee identified what he called the “360-degree view.” It happens, he said, in your 40s or 50s, when you’re old enough to understand the folly of youth and still young enough to see and feel the agonizing decline of the generation ahead. From left, John Earl Jelks, Debra Messing, Enrico Colantoni and Susannah Flood take a bow during the 'Birthday Candles' curtain call of Broadway opening night at American Airlines Theatre on April 10, 2022, in New York City.

Susannah flood law and order