NEW YORK — 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. For this and other reasons, older writers come with a built-in advantage when it comes to new plays.
If only Broadway, always obsessed with the young, better understood what it is missing.
The wonderful new drama “Birthday Candles,” which stars Debra Messing of “Will and Grace” fame, is a perfect example. 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. No young person could have written this play; the pain and discoveries of the author are all over every beautifully written line.
