Broadway review by Adam Feldman
A funny thing happens halfway through the sharply double-edged Broadway comedy Eureka Day. Early on, playwright Jonathan Spector’s rapier seems to be pointed at wokeness and its micro-passive-aggressions. The play’s five characters form the Executive Committee of an ultraprogressive private school in the Berkeley Hills, which can only make decisions by consensus; they spend the opening scene earnestly discussing whether a pulldown menu on the school’s webpage should include “Transracial Adoptee” as a category of cultural self-identification. The prevailing attitude seems to be that you can’t make an omelet without walking on eggshells.
But Eureka Day reaches peak hilarity at its midway point, when an outbreak of mumps throws the school into crisis, and the committee—deadlocked about whether to require that students be vaccinated—brings the issue before an online forum of concerned parents. The ensuing debate, projected in scrolling text on the set’s back wall, soon devolves into a flame war between vaxxers and antivaxxers: an inferno of self-righteous invective in which any hope of agreement, or even basic civility, goes up in smoke.
Eureka Day | Photograph: Courtesy Jeremy Daniel
The committee members try to make their cases during this online fracas, but good luck trying to follow what they say or even hear them over the laughter. At this point, the play turns a corner; contrasted with the chaos and vitriol of online discourse, the ideal of personal discussion and consensus—however difficult, silly and possibly impossible it may be in practice—comes to seem a lot less ridiculous. “No one in this room is a villain,” as committee chairman Don (Bill Irwin) says. “And we all want what’s best for the school.” Both Spector and director Anna D. Shapiro take that attitude seriously. As the stakes rise, engendering a serious look at the responsibilities of individuals within communities, the play provides a respectful airing of arguments.
Broadway audiences, of course, are more likely to identify with the sensible Carina (played by Amber Gray with characteristic inner steel), or even with the committee’s swing votes: wishy-washy stay-at-home-dad Ian (and aptly squirmy Thomas Middleditch) and single mother Meiko (Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz). But Spector arms the play’s antivaxxers not only with the usual skepticism of scientific norms but also, more disarmingly, with personal experience and pain; as embodied by the superior Jessica Hecht—one of the three graces of New York’s nonprofit theater, alongside Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon—Eureka Day’s most compelling figure is longtime committee member Suzanne, who speaks gently and rubs her heart sympathetically and staunchly opposes vaccination.
Eureka Day | Photograph: Courtesy Jeremy Daniel
Eureka Day was already timely when it made its local debut Off Broadway in 2019. It is even more so in this Manhattan Theatre Club revival, now that vaccine denier Robert F. Kennedy has been chosen to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in the next administration. It seems more important than ever to engage with this issue and to understand the views of those who disagree. Eureka Day is often very funny, but it also contributes valuably to that discourse. Even as it needles the left, it offers an invigorating shot in the arm.
Eureka Day. Samuel J. Friedman Theater (Broadway). By Jonathan Spector. Directed by Anna D. Shapiro. With Jessica Hecht, Amber Gray, Thomas Middleditch, Bill Irwin, Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz. Running time: 1hr 40mins. No intermission.
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Eureka Day | Photograph: Courtesy Jeremy Daniel
