There aren’t many multitudes to Della, a spry North Carolinian serving up muffins with gallons of sugary-sweet Southern attraction, a facet order of smiles all the time free. But Della holds conservative tendencies cloaked in components of the bible that justify a really particular, refined worldview that truly doesn’t welcome everybody.
Metropolis Lights Theater Firm’s manufacturing of Bekah Brunstetter’s “The Cake,” with a heaping of assured route from Lisa Mallette, affords a pointy mix of simplicity and complication. It subtly crafts a balanced degree of battle that explodes inside Della. But the script veers into simplistic territory too typically regardless of its honesty and steadiness, partaking the subject material with child gloves. That’s no difficulty for the solid, whose members push previous the play’s extra problematic components to craft a heat manufacturing.
Della (Luisa Sermol) lives a civil, uncomplicated life. She is giddy whereas speaking cake, taking up a hefty quantity of orders to remain busy. There aren’t any kids between Della and her rugged plumber husband Tim (Tom Gough), which maintains a selected degree of beneath-the-surface ache the fun-loving couple shoos away as they dig into trash tv on the finish of a protracted day.
Marriage ceremony muffins are a vibe for Della’s flour-filled world, since she has crafted her share of them. And there’s a main thrill when Della receives a go to from her late buddy’s niece Jen (Lizzie Izyumin). There may be clearly deep love rooted in historical past between the 2, due to this fact it might be pure for Jen to request a cake from Della for her upcoming nuptials. However there’s a dilemma.
Jen isn’t marrying an ex-convict, thief, or somebody who thinks cake consumption is a one-way ticket to Hell. She is marrying an achieved, lovely Black lady from Brooklyn named Macy (Sundiata Ayinde). Nevertheless, all Della can see is immorality between any two feminine brides, hurriedly making an excuse of being slammed by orders in six months. Yup, means too busy to scoop an additional shot of batter for one whom she embraces as her personal.
Della’s charms purchase her numerous capital, but the script doesn’t all the time discover her worthy of extra intense interrogation, which might doubtless pierce the fraught scenario much more. A sure older technology has struggled extra with what is correct and simply with regards to preventing the evils of bigotry concerning homosexual marriage, and Della is caught within the center. Her defective theology pushes her to 1 facet, a late try to quote Corinthians ringing hole, however there are moments the place it feels she may be salvaged, doubtless lengthy after the play concludes.
Because the preliminary inorganic nature of Macy’s dialogue strikes ahead, Ayinde finds a sure consolation degree and begins to combat tougher inside her character. Her Macy is at a extreme drawback outdoors of her liberal, jap seaboard bubble. And Izyumin proves to be a stable listener with Meisnerian sensibilities, at her finest when reacting to the numerous painful let downs Della serves up like a heat slice of purple velvet.
These let-downs aren’t simply reserved for Della’s giving palms. In one of many play’s extra fascinating subplots, the aim of intercourse, lengthy a weapon in the direction of those that can’t procreate, is debated with truthful strokes. The play makes a robust case of how damaging these beliefs are, the place intercourse as intimate connection is secondary to creating a child. Much more dangerous — intercourse belongs to a sure technology, an expiration date for lust solely utilized to an older physique.
Actual life married couple Gough and Sermol provide their finest skills whereas exploring these concepts with humor and coronary heart. Gough, a widely known South Bay humorous man on each conventional and improv phases, bears down right here and shows emotional, weak truths (and one helluva mashed potato mountain).
The whole play runs by way of Sermol’s brilliance, a literal Broadway actor who finds each inch of daring nuance inside Della. Her understanding of learn how to arrange payoffs with hilarity or heartache provides the present its powers. Her face is a canvas of expressive, enchanting elasticity that shows unbridled pleasure and profound loss. Discover the moments when she confronts defeat, cheeks as flush because the pink partitions on Ron Gasparinetti’s extremely purposeful scenic design. In these moments, will she develop away from the hurt she causes?
Who is aware of. In a play like “The Cake,” there are solutions, some clearer than others. However one factor is for sure — if love is ever allowed to flourish with out reserve, a stupendous creation with butter, sugar, and flour will style scrumptious for everybody.
David John Chávez is chair of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Affiliation and a two-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (‘22-‘23); @davidjchavez.bsky.social.
‘THE CAKE’
By Bekah Brunstetter, offered by Metropolis Lights Theater Firm
By way of: June 8
The place: Metropolis Lights Theater, 529 S. Second St., San Jose
Operating time: 90 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $38-$63; cltc.org
