When he announced the lineup for Florida Studio Theatre’s 2025-26 season, Producing Artistic Director Richard Hopkins said he was picking shows that would help bring people together and “find our humanity and commonality.”

Noah Haidle’s “Birthday Candles,” which closes the season, certainly achieves that mission with its story about a woman and her growing family as she makes a birthday cake for each of her birthdays from 17 to 101.

It’s an often whimsical play, and while it tends toward clichés, it is focused on tradition and family as Ernestine Ashworth follows the golden butter cake recipe passed down by her mother, the one made of “stardust” and “atoms left over from creation.”

Most of the time, Ernestine is found at a kitchen island working on the cake – sifting flour, adding butter and sugar and mixing all the ingredients – as her life whirls around her and time hurtles forward. She pauses here and there to measure her height on a closet door, to welcome children and grandchildren and watch them grow, and to face the realities of a life with her husband of many years.

The kitchen is where her future husband, Matt, invites her to the prom, just moments after she rejects a similar invitation from her neighbor, Kenneth, who has adored her from afar for most of his life. Someone gets ill in the room, and another family member may never be seen again. It’s the circle of life.

Ernestine is played by Rachel Moulton, who has become one of FST’s most reliable and engaging actors over the years. She is charming, earnest and real, and you can’t help but fall for her and feel something as she faces life’s challenges, all of which breeze by. But that breeziness has its consequences. Haidle doesn’t dwell on the challenging times or the loss of a loved one, so the impact of key moments may feel diminished. We’re just watching things whirr by. 

This production reunites Moulton with director Kate Alexander for their 10th collaboration at the theater, and together they create a lovely flow as this play’s story unfolds with subtle changes in character. Passing time is marked by the sound of a bell that may mean one year or 10, and deaths are signaled by a deeper gong. Ernestine keeps preparing the cake even as five or 20 years pass. She never changes and there is no outward indication that she is aging. She’s as robust and spirited at the end as she is at the start in her rebellious teenage years when she whines to her mother, “Have I wasted my life?”

We will hear that phrase several more times from children or grandchildren when they reach the point of wondering about their futures.

Moulton is joined by a cast of actors who mostly play two more or more characters, aside from Rod Brogan who is charmingly nerdy as the besotted neighbor, Kenneth, with an abundance of patience. He clearly won over the opening night audience.

Susan Haefner is first seen as Ernestine’s mother and then plays her daughter and granddaughter, each with similar but different challenges. Peter Kendall is joyously upbeat at the start as the jock-ish Matt, who then settles into a routine as the family expands. Freddie Lee Bennett is adorable as the son, Billy, who we get to know over multiple birthday visits, and Sarah Elizabeth Colt does a fine job playing several different characters, from spouses to children, each with their own nervous tics and worries.

Time clearly passes but there are no outward signs. The attractive kitchen set by Isabel and Moriah Curley-Clay doesn’t change over nearly a century of life. There is no technology evident from radios or televisions or phones. That allows the focus to remain on the consistency and changes in how families interact, how one person’s troubles or illness impacts the others.

It’s all kind of a sweet and nice look at the many stages of life we all go through. We can see ourselves reflected in Ernestine and the other characters, but they come and go so swiftly at times, they don’t have time to fully register or speak to us.

‘Birthday Candles’ by Noah Haidle. Directed by Kate Alexander. Reviewed April 3, Florida Studio Theatre, Gompertz Theatre, 1265 First St., Sarasota. Runs through May 17. Tickets start at $39. floridastudiotheatre.org; 941-366-9000