Theatre in Review: Eureka Day (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)

	Bill Irwin, Thomas Middleditch, Amber Gray, Jessica Hecht, Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz. Photo: Jeremy Daniel

In Eureka Day's funniest scene -- which is to say the funniest scene in town -- the eminent cast of Jonathan Spector's play is upstaged by David Bengali's projection design. It's intentional, of course, and the actors are excellent sports about it; then again, they're helpless as wave after wave of laughter breaks over the auditorium. All are cast as board members of a progressive school in the left-wing enclave of Berkeley, California. Early on, Spector has fun with their deeply self-conscious dedication to being correct and inclusive. As one mother notes, "You can always spot a Eureka Day kid because at soccer games they're the ones who cheer when the other team scores."

Now, however, a crisis looms: The mumps is spreading through the student body, laying bare the substantial number of kids who haven't gotten the MMR vaccine. The authorities intervene, urging parents to get their children jabbed, but the board, which operates on a consensus basis, finds itself unable to articulate a policy. Meanwhile, revolt is in the air, with a dauntingly large cohort of families signing a petition demanding the school's laissez-faire vaccination policy be reversed. Hamstrung, the board convenes a "community-activated conversation," a fancy term for a Zoom meeting, and, in the best tradition of digital get-togethers, it goes south with remarkable speed.

As Don, the headmaster, applies his best emollient manner to defuse the controversy, we see the participating parents' comments projected on an upstage screen. At first, it is littered with irrelevant gossip about old friends and musings on, of all things, Heidegger. Then, as everyone focuses on the subject, they fall into warring tribes, hurling invective at those who disagree. "Human beings survived MILLIONS of years before Western medicine," one poster claims. "And half of all women died in childbirth," another responds. One fed-up father announces, "Remember that time I got crippled from polio? Oh, no wait. I didn't. Cause I got FUCKING VACCINATED." Punctuating the acrimony, and slaying with machine-like efficiency, is Leslie, who responds to nearly every other comment with a thumbs-up emoticon. The actors onstage, attempting to wrangle this online chaos, are drowned out in laughter.

Not that all of Eureka Day operates on this highly farcical level; more often, it is a needle-sharp satire of progressives struggling, however performatively, to do the right thing, only to get all tangled up in their finely honed scruples. Spector has a wicked eye for virtue-signaling activities: An excruciating conversation about inclusivity on the admissions forms' dropdown menu, which already takes in every possible racial classification -- "East Asian Heritage, West Asian Heritage, Multiracial Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian Heritage, South Asian Heritage, Southeast Asian Heritage," and that's just one region! -- concludes with the general agreement that "transracial adoptee" doesn't cut it as a category. Everyone ruefully recalls the ill-advised eighth-grade production of Peter Pan, which, in the effort to confront its "extremely problematic portrayal of Native Peoples" and "a whole host of colonialist issues," ended up being relocated to outer space. (Christopher Durang's Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You once consigned Betty Comden and Adolph Green to hell; the characters in Eureka Day might agree -- if any of them believed in that eternal destination.)

Then again, Spector's characters aren't just subjects for spoofing; they're deeply well-intentioned, serious about building community and living moral lives. And when someone's little boy ends up in the hospital in a medically induced coma, we understand the real-world consequences of this brouhaha. First seen Off Broadway in the summer of 2019, Eureka Day felt thoroughly of the moment; at the Friedman, it seems to encapsulate the last five years into a single explosive joke.

Anna D. Shapiro's staging doesn't miss a passive-aggressive nuance or unspoken thought, aided by a sterling cast. As Suzanne, the head of the board and one of the school's founders, Jessica Hecht is the kindest, cheeriest bully imaginable, wielding her moral authority like a carefully sheathed mace. "There's no benefit in Feeling Seen if you're simultaneously Being Othered," she says, in a typical ex-cathedra pronouncement. (The spelling is Spector's; his characters often speak in capital letters when cornering the market on righteousness.) Suzanne is the leader of the anti-vax delegation, but she has her reasons, revealed in the poignant recollection of a terrible family tragedy. And, caught in a moment of unconscious racism, her penitence is delicious. Bill Irwin is perfectly fatuous as Don, who, even in a panic over the school's increasingly perilous finances, never met a platitude he didn't like. He's part corporate facilitator, frantically scrawling illegible keywords signaling "common interests" on a giant easel board hoping to find an acceptable compromise, and part secular minister, opening and closing each meeting with a passage from the thirteenth-century Islamic poet Rumi. (It's particularly amusing to see Irwin, our greatest silent clown, deliver Don's thoughts on retirement, announcing he might attend mime school. "Don," Suzanne replies, "in nineteen years I've never heard you be silent for more than two minutes.")

Also: Amber Gray, who previously presided over the underworld doings at Hadestown, is a fountain of common sense as Carina -- the newest member of the board -- to whom goes the task of explaining to Suzanne, as nicely as possible, that she is out of her mind. Thomas Middleditch has a nice hangdog presence as Eli, a wealthy househusband, who, hunting for a reason to exist, has "passed through monogamy," carrying on a side affair with Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz's increasingly tense and skeptical Meiko, whose daughter might be the mini epidemic's Patient Zero.

The production design does a splendid job of locating the action in a specific cultural context. Todd Rosenthal's expansive school library set is backed by a view of the plaza outside, surrounded by Spanish-style buildings; clearly, Eureka Day is run by people with plenty of money to spend. Inside, note the posters lauding such role models as Michelle Obama, Maya Angelou, and Albert Einstein. Clint Ramos' costumes are incisive studies of casual chic favored by those who don't want to advertise their wealth. Jen Schriever's lighting provides solid time-of-day looks, gracefully transitioning from scene to scene. Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen's sound design includes quizzical, lightly humorous music to match the script's tone. As noted, Bengali's projections are exquisitely timed to keep the laughs flowing.

Eureka Day is the best kind of satire, written with keen sympathy for its characters and their all-too-human foibles; as Spector makes hilariously clear, we are often at our worst when trying to be our best. The play also demonstrates the tipping point where far-left thinking meets far-right libertarianism, and how a too-intense focus on consensus can easily turn into the tyranny of a single dissenter. In a rueful acknowledgment of recent events, the playwright adds a new last line that brings down the curtain on a horrified laugh. We're all in this together, he seems to say, so buckle up; it's going to be a bumpy ride.--David Barbour