Roughly midway through Jonathan Spector’s play now receiving its Broadway premiere courtesy of Manhattan Theatre Club, there’s a scene involving a livestream Zoom call between the board of directors of an upscale Berkeley, California private elementary school and the students’ parents. The subject is the school’s recent decision to issue a quarantine because of a mumps outbreak and the fact that many of the children aren’t vaccinated. The ensuing debate, which quickly goes off the rails with a series of frequently profane, derogatory comments (accompanied by the contributors’ photos, and in some cases, avatars) is perhaps the funniest fifteen minutes seen onstage this year. Or, at least the funniest to take place semi-virtually.
The rest of Eureka Day — previously seen in regional theaters, Off-Broadway, and a London production featuring Helen Hunt — doesn’t quite live up to that hilarious segment, projected on the rear wall of the set, that produces a virtual firestorm of laughs. The actors onstage, mostly reduced to making horrified faces, might as well not even be there.
First seen in 2018, the play simultaneously tapped into the contemporary social zeitgeist and proved remarkably prescient considering the COVID outbreak and resulting societal dissension that would take place not much later. The latter aspect is nodded to in this version’s ironically funny final line which brings down the house.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★★★ review here.]
The satirical comedy is set in the library of the elementary school, decorated with the sort of politically correct nods to the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Michelle Obama reflecting the school’s ultra-liberal orientation. It depicts a series of meetings of the board of directors, including its leader Don (Bill Irwin), an aging hippie-type who likes to punctuate the events with recitations of quotations from the mystical poet Rumi; the wealthy Suzanne (Jessica Hecht, priceless as ever), whose solicitous expressions of concern about the others’ feelings mask a steely will; Carina (Amber Gray), the newcomer to the group, who’s recently moved to the area with her wife; Eli (Thomas Middleditch), a rich tech entrepreneur who’s now a stay-at-home dad enjoying a polyamorous lifestyle; and Meiko (Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz), the single mother of a young daughter who may have been the first of the children to get mumps.
The playwright effectively satirizes woke excesses via such exchanges in which the board members discuss the potential make-up for a list of every possible ethnicity for a survey to be filled out by parents or the recent school production of Peter Pan that eliminated the musicals’ problematic racial elements by setting it in outer space (it also had the additional advantage of providing the opportunity for all the young cast members to fly).
But neither the dialogue, characterizations, nor plot elements, the latter including the revelation of an affair between Eli and Meiko, have the crisp sharpness of, say, Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage, which similarly lampooned parental conflicts. The 100-minute evening feels longer than it is thanks to the sluggish pacing and frequent repetition. There is the occasional powerful moment, most notably a monologue by Suzanne in which she reveals the tragic backstory behind her opposition to vaccination. But too much of the play is dependent on such tired cliches as the “artisanal scones” which help the board members get through the long meetings in which decisions are made not by majority vote but consensus.
Still, Eureka Day deserves praise for its comic treatment of the sort of contemporary social issues not often paid attention to on Broadway, the fine performances by its ensemble (Irwin deserves special credit for tamping down his usual comic persona), and that amazingly funny livestream sequence that will prevent you from ever sitting through a similar one with a straight face ever again.
Eureka Day opened December 16, 2024, at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre and runs through January 19, 2025. Tickets and information: manhattantheatreclub.com
