America’s culture wars get an illuminating skirmish in “The Cake,” Bekah Brunstetter’s play about a North Carolina woman named Jen, who returns to her hometown from Brooklyn to plan the traditional wedding of her dreams.
Initially thrilled when she thinks Jen has a groom waiting in the wings, Della pleads a packed schedule when it becomes clear that Macy, the inquisitive young, black woman who has come into Della’s bakery, is Jen’s intended.
“The Cake” asks of both the baker and the bride: What do you do when someone you love does something you can’t accept?
City Theatre has just opened in the Carnival Studio Theater of Miami’s Arsht Center an insightful, bittersweet, tenderly wrought version of Brunstetter’s much-produced play.
Like the playwright, director Margaret M. Ledford gives weight and respect to the conflicting beliefs and emotions in the script. “The Cake” aims to dig deeper than the us vs. them positions that fuel so much ugliness in discourse. It wants us to listen, to think, to consider different perspectives. And, as an audience, we do.
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