‘Eureka Day’ assessment: Vaccine debate erupts at woke faculty

“Eureka Day,” a comedy by Jonathan Spector that wades into the controversy on vaccine mandates, has solely turn out to be extra explosively topical since its 2018 premiere at Aurora Theatre Firm, in Berkeley, Calif.

The play, which is having its Los Angeles premiere at Pasadena Playhouse, looks like it might have been commissioned to skewer this harmful, benighted and utterly mortifying anti-science second. However Spector wrote the work earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed our political demons and made silly nice once more.

“Eureka Day” takes its identify from the fictional non-public elementary faculty in Berkeley that’s the setting for what’s each a satire of anti-vaccine tradition and a comedy of woke manners. Held in a determinedly cheerful Bay Space classroom (brightly summoned with all the required social justice touches by set designer Wilson Chin), the play unfolds as a collection of conferences of the varsity’s govt committee.

Don (Rick Holmes), the pinnacle of college, is ostensibly in cost, although his duck-and-cover technique for coping with battle has a method of protracting issues. 4 mother and father, one a newcomer nonetheless acclimating to the varsity’s strenuously progressive guidelines, are a part of the manager mind belief.

The primary dialogue of the brand new faculty 12 months is comparatively innocuous although no much less testing for being so. Eli (Nate Corddry), a stay-at-home dad who made a fortune at Fb, has proposed including “Transracial Adoptee” to a drop-down menu on an admissions type already burgeoning with id subcategories.

Suzanne (Mia Barron), a mom who has despatched so many youngsters by way of Eureka Day that she has a proprietary perspective in regards to the place, doesn’t assume this extra class is critical. She’s delicate — self-consciously so — to Eli’s good intentions, however she persuades the group that no adjustments are vital right now.

“Persuades” may be a euphemism. Suzanne has an iron will that she thinly veils with a solicitous smile.

One of many quirks of the manager committee is that it operates by consensus moderately than a majority vote. This could result in some “very lengthy conferences,” Suzanne informs Carina (Cherise Boothe), the brand new Black lesbian mother who just lately moved from Maryland.

Suzanne claims to need everybody to really feel “empowered,” although her controlling temperament pokes by way of her welcoming facade. Meiko (Camille Chen), who knits throughout conferences with a delicate air of annoyance, has to loudly ask Suzanne to please cease talking on her behalf.

These blind spots, a regular ingredient of comedian characters, are notably obvious in Suzanne’s case. When Carina tells her that she didn’t homeschool her son for kindergarten however despatched him to public faculty, Suzanne is mildly horrified. She additionally makes the idea that Carina isn’t a “full pay” household.

There’s even one thing passive-aggressive about Suzanne’s present of concern for all viewpoints, a trait that turns into all of the extra conspicuous after a disaster erupts on the faculty. A mumps outbreak forces Eureka Day to briefly shut its doorways.

Don informs the manager committee that the well being division has issued a letter stipulating what mother and father should do for his or her little one to return to highschool. The topic isn’t open for debate, however Suzanne is uneasy about how this letter is being “framed.”

She’s an advocate of parental selection in the case of vaccines, not trusting the specialists who’ve decided that solely youngsters who’re vaccinated can return to highschool when there’s a threat of an infection. She believes vaccines stand in the best way of pure herd immunity.

Mia Barron, left, Rick Holmes, Cherise Boothe, and Camille Chen in “Eureka Day” at Pasadena Playhouse.

(Jeff Lorch)

Meiko is much less vociferous in her anti-vaccine stance than Suzanne, however she has her personal skepticism about trendy drugs and doesn’t wish to be informed what to do. When her daughter develops mumps, it turns into an emergency for Eli, who’s been having an affair with Meiko. The 2 prepare their assignations round playdates, and their youngsters have been just lately in touch.

Eli, who’s married however in a sophisticated open relationship scenario along with his more and more resentful spouse, would moderately not have to decide on sides within the vaccine mandate debate. However when his son will get sick after spending time with Meiko’s unvaccinated daughter, he finds he can not keep on the fence.

The well-programmed comedy hilariously runs its course within the management vacuum created by the varsity’s over-accommodating tradition. Don is so frightened about seeming to favor one parental faction over one other that he permits Suzanne to turn out to be the dominant voice within the room.

The manufacturing, directed by Teddy Bergman, has a discipline day with the woke-run-amok ethos of Eureka Day, the place youngsters on the faculty cheer the opposite staff’s objectives at soccer video games. However Bergman’s strategy is extra schematic than Anna D. Shapiro’s Tony-winning Broadway revival.

Maybe the urgency of the second requires a clearer ethical stand, however the comedy has misplaced some nuance. On Broadway, Jessica Hecht made Suzanne appear completely oblivious to her personal rage. She actually believed that she was searching for consensus, tolerant of all views so long as they didn’t impinge on her beliefs, the origins of that are poignantly associated later within the play.

The fury of Barron’s Suzanne is way more on the floor. The humor is extra direct — Barron will be very humorous — however the debate is much less trenchant. Bergman’s manufacturing, marred by blasts of jarring people music between scene transitions, is slightly too on the nostril.

Boothe’s Carina, by far the strongest efficiency within the forged, is our rational surrogate within the play — a guardian making an attempt to slot in with out betraying her intelligence or little one’s welfare. I appreciated the best way Holmes lets us come to our personal conclusions about Don’s go-along-to-get-along fashion of working the ship.

Meiko is woefully underwritten, and Chen’s efficiency, whereas amusing when Meiko erupts, typically appears disconnected. Corddry refuses to play a tech business cliché, however Eli, a bland creep, comes off as unnecessarily imprecise.

Bergman has hassle finding that candy spot between jokey exaggeration and multidimensional authenticity. Comedy trades in sorts, however the forged might have benefited from extra fine-tuning.

Maybe that’s why the funniest scene within the play includes the dwell chat portion of a digital assembly that’s organized for Eureka Day mother and father alarmed in regards to the quarantine scenario. Avatars sq. off in opposition to each other in a vaccine debate free-for-all that places the deceive the varsity’s “neighborhood of respect” motto with uncensored savagery punctuated by missile-like emoticons.

“Eureka Day” will make you snort, however how a lot this manufacturing will make you assume is an open query.