Theater Review by Carol Rocamora . . .
Mid-way through Eureka Day, now playing at the Manhattan Theatre Club, there’s a scene that I want to go back and see over and over again. It’s the funniest fifteen minutes on Broadway this season. And it happens in—of all places—the library of an elementary school, where the Executive Committee is hosting a ZOOM meeting with the parents to discuss a crisis.
Before I elaborate any further on the absolute hilarity that takes place in that scene, let me first identify the crisis . . . which isn’t a funny one at all. It’s an outbreak of mumps that has infected half the student body at the school. The issue is whether to keep the school shut and institute a mandatory vaccination policy. What makes it absolutely hilarious is the interaction between the committee and the parents, in an exchange (or non-exchange) that disintegrates into chaos, obscene name-calling, and near-violence.
But the debate on vaccines isn’t the only issue in Jonathan Spector’s sizzling satire. Essentially, Eureka Day is about group dynamics, institutional decision-making, and the delusion of consensus in the age of “liberal woke-ism”. Or “woke liberalism”—whatever you want to call it.
We follow the school’s Executive Committee through seven meetings during an extremely stressful year (2018) at Eureka Day, a private school for the privileged (and scholarship-supported students) in the affluent Berkeley, California area. The committee head is its benign principal, Don (Bill Irwin), who is patient to the point of sainthood. He leads a discussion in the well-known language of political correctness, which has a vocabulary that includes “feeling seen,” “feeling heard,” “being othered,” “core values,” and, above all, “consensus”—the modus operandi of the group which, of course, isn’t consensus at all, but rather a smokescreen hiding conflicting agendas fueled by wealth and social status.
The Committee spends the majority of the first meeting on several issues:
1) funding the all-gender bathrooms; 2) offensive “colonial” elements of a recent production of Peter Pan, which were resolved by setting it in outer space so that all the kids could fly; and 3) pondering whether or not to include the words “transracial adoptee” in the school’s student admissions guidelines. (In other words, they are way past “diversity, equity and inclusion.”) As one parent declares: “You can always spot a Eureka Day kid because at soccer games they’re the ones who cheer when the other team scores.”
The Committee includes four more members, each filling a spot on the “DEI” spectrum. There’s Suzanne (Jessica Hecht), the longest-standing member: she’s white, a mother of five (all by IVF, it turns out), wealthy, a part-time “life coach,” and the member most fluent in politically correct language. There’s Eli (Thomas Middleditch): white, half-Jewish, in his 30s but already retired after cashing out on a successful start-up company. (He and his wife have an open marriage, negotiated by their therapist.) There’s Carina (Amber Gray): biracial, a new parent, and a pleaser (at least at the beginning). And finally, there’s Meiko (Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz): bi-racial, Japanese, a Berkeley native, and a single mother by choice (she knits throughout the meetings).
Together, this DEI-by-the-book cast acts according to stereotype, as the consensus that Suzanne advocates soon dissolves into hard, conflicting lines. These come to the surface during that absolutely riotous school meeting—a.k.a. the “Community Activated Conversation”—to which I referred above, involving the entire Committee facing a ZOOM screen downstage (that we can’t see) with parent participants. First Don, and then committee members, speaks and the “chat room” (above their heads) lights up with dozens of parental comments and emojis. The meeting is orderly for about a minute but soon degenerates into a separate exchange between the parents on “chat,” which in turn degenerates into a cursing, offending, insult match, while the Committee is completely ignored. How Anna Shapiro expertly manages to direct the split-second timing between the three simultaneous, overlapping dialogues—committee members to each other, committee members to parents, parents to parents in “chat”—is a tour de force. The result is utterly uproarious.
Next, the traumatized Committee navigates through a mandated “cooling period,” in search of a solution to the crisis. During it, personal issues and biases are revealed that are not funny at all. The final resolution—of whether to mandate vaccines or not—is chilling in its “realpolitik,” debunking the process of consensus, and questioning whether it ever could be possible at all in running an institution. “Most people in most places are basically trying to do the right thing,” says Meiko. But not quite, as this perceptive play shows.
Meanwhile, there is so much to admire and enjoy in this superb production. Bill Irwin is delightful in his portrayal of a principal who pleases and placates, talks the talk, but in the end follows the path of least resistance. Jessica Hecht is priceless in the role of the self-deluded Suzanne, whose liberal ideas prove no match for the tough forces of realism. The cheerful set design of the school library (by Todd Rosenthal) makes a mockery of what happens there.
Ironically, Jonathan Spector’s thought-provoking play—particularly in this post-COVID time of regime change and anti-vaxx fervor—hits even harder than it did when it was written six years ago. Indeed, Don’s final words elicited a gasp from the audience at the performance I attended:
“ . . . and that’s why I believe with all my heart
it’s going to be clear skies and smooth sailing
as we launch together into the 2019/2020 school year.”
Eureka Day. Through January 19 at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue). www.manhattantheatreclub.com
Photos: Jeremy Daniel
