Not So Musical Monday: The Cake

Spoiler warning: The following review contains mild spoilers from The Cake, which opened earlier this month Off-Broadway.

Any time I see a play, movie, or really any type of media has a storyline that feels ripped from the headlines, I am usually hesitant to get excited. It feels like it will be formulaic—a Law and Order episode, for example—rather than have a lot of nuance and thought to it. When I read the description for The Cake—a baker from North Carolina struggles with her morals when asked to bake a cake for a close family friend’s lesbian wedding—I felt this apprehension. When I learned the playwright was from North Carolina, which I admittedly also am, I thought this might provide some interesting nuance to the story. While The Cake had moments I quite enjoyed, unfortunately what holds it back is the very lack of nuance I was hoping for. 

The playwright, Bekah Brunstetter, and I both have undergraduate degrees from the University of North Carolina. I was born in Raleigh, though raised in Atlanta, and Ms. Brunstetter grew up in Winston-Salem. Some of the lines in the play hit incredibly close to home about straddling two worlds—the south and New York. I don’t know much about Ms. Brunstetter’s life but reading she now lives in Brooklyn makes me appreciate that there were several lines that felt very true to the heart. Additionally, I laughed out loud at multiple parts of the show. There was a moment where the baker, played impressively by Debra Jo Rupp, says people’s biggest issue baking was skimping on actual butter or milk. The delivery was very funny. Similarly, there was a bit where she poured out her bowl of gluten, dairy free dough. A large lump of Play-Doh landed on the table. It was a very funny sight gag that also reminded me of a number of very bad, healthy-ish desserts.

For all the lines I liked, both in the relatable and the humor, I was often left wanting so much more. There are only four characters in the play: the baker, her husband, the family friend, and the fiancée. The husband and the fiancée are little more than stereotypes—the husband is a conservative stereotype who boasts about his way of life and looks down on all those being different—the idea of someone being lesbian is considered “gross.” The fiancée is a complete New York stereotype—she is rude, unnecessarily abrasive in all parts. She yells at everyone—deservedly and not, and within 5 minutes of meeting a complete stranger (the baker who you find out later she should try to impress), the fiancée is yelling at her how she should completely reevaluate her life and morals. 

The other two characters—the baker and the family friend—feel like little more than modeling clay who speak only rarely for themselves. Nearly every line they speak sounds as if someone is speaking through them—be that the husband, the fiancée, both of their departed mothers, or otherwise. This felt lackluster because they also showed very little actual growth. The play ends with the baker being a tiny bit more accepting of the relationship but still not ready to fully embrace what she finds different—truth be told this is the same amount of acceptance she shows in the scene immediately following learning of the relationship. The family friend, on the other hand, still feels like the same character she is at the end that she was at the beginning. Her moment of strength is her sounding like she is mirroring what her girlfriend wants her to say and not her own awakening.

On the plus side, the play has a lot of moral ambiguity. I enjoy moral ambiguity. Neither character being given any type of real closure makes the play feel real, but in a 90-minute play it also felt lacking. I wanted to see character growth that felt organic; I wanted to see characters grow for themselves. Unfortunately, the other two characters being such unlikeable stereotypes made it so difficult to see this. They overpowered the other two characters and made them feel voiceless in a way that felt less like a statement and more like happenstance.

There were so many lines and moments I did enjoy, but the lack of nuance was bothersome. I wanted the shades of gray in more than just the ending. The Cake certainly had its ups, but I left the theater feeling like I wanted more.