Review: 'The Cake' @ Barrington Stage, 6/24/18

Pittsfield, Mass.

Debra Jo Rupp gives a performance that's masterful in both humor and deep emotion in "The Cake," a brilliantly written dramedy having its East Coast premiere in a production every bit as good as BSC's outstanding mainstage opener, "The Royal Family of Broadway."

Rupp plays Della, a Bible-believing North Carolinian in her 50s who owns a bakery and runs straight into the triple blades of religion, politics and family when she's asked by her goddaughter, Jen, to make a wedding cake for Jen's upcoming nuptials. Momentarily thrilled, Della balks when she realizes the intended is not a groom but another bride – Macy.

Though this sounds ripped from the headlines, it's not: "The Cake" is better than that. The recent Colorado case involving a bakery refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding seemed like an instance of people picking a fight – or, more benevolently, taking a stand – in order to make a point. In contrast, as written with passion, scrupulous fairness and empathy for all characters by Bekah Brunstetter, who is lead writer and supervising producer for the hit NBC drama "This Is Us," "The Cake" focuses on the personal. It isn't about a legal fight. It's about what happens when people who truly love one come into conflict over profoundly held beliefs.

Jen, played by Virginia Vale in an open, appealing performance, is a sunny Southern gal who's still adjusting to the cultural differences in Brooklyn, where she and Macy, a writer, now live. Jen tells Macy (Nemuna Ceesay, excellent), her head swirling at the thought, "We are in a young adult book club just for lesbians! There are so many of you that there is a whole club just for lesbians who JUST enjoy young adult fiction from the late 1980s!" Steeped in the South and its Christianity, Jen longs for a big, traditional, brides-in-white wedding, which holds no appeal for Macy; besides being queer, Macy is black and agnostic, and she has long been estranged from her family. (Her father threw a Bible at her head when she came out.)

Macy is also a writer who publishes on progressive online sites, and she can't stay quiet, much less let it go, when Della refuses to make their cake – or, more precisely, unconvincingly protests that she's too busy to be able to fit them in. The resulting story imperils Della's candidacy for a slot on a TV bake-off series, manifested in a series of fantasy sequences in which it's increasingly unclear, as a result of Della's distressed mind, whether the voiceover is coming from the bake-off's plummy-voiced announcer, whom Della idolizes, or Della herself, or God.

Under the direction of Jennifer Chambers, who directed the play's world premiere last summer in Los Angeles, and working on an extraordinarily effective set by Tim Mackabee, "The Cake" covers a vibrant palette of genuine emotion. Religion gets its due, with Brunstetter and her characters neither condescending to nor ennobling it. What do you do when the beliefs at the core of your life – and the core of your community, your whole world – smash up against a challenge that seems too big to confront? As Della tells her husband, played with sympathy, humor and grounded authenticity by Douglas Rees, "I – I am tryin -- I am open to change, I just – I can't do it over night, I got a brain and a heart at war."

Rupp is known to Barrington Stage audiences for six past productions including "Love Letters" and "Kimberly Akimbo" and to the wider TV audience as Kitty, the lead character's mother on the sitcom "That '70s Show." It's hard to imagine anyone being better as Della, at least in part because Rupp originated the role. Funny, flighty, well-intentioned and riven by a situation she'd really rather had never arisen, Rupp's Della is a woman at a crossroads, at once utterly specific as an individual and representative of a whole population of America today.

sbarnes@timesunion.com • 518-454-5489 • blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping • @Tablehopping • facebook.com/SteveBarnesFoodCritic