Theatreguide.London
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The Theatreguide.London Review
Eureka Day
Old Vic Theatre Autumn 2022
A gentle satirical mocking of contemporary liberal sensibilities opens Jonathan Spector’s engaging play Eureka Day.
It’s amusing enough to have you leaning back in expectation of a night of comedy. But the unsettling development of the plot has something very serious to say about the real limits of liberal values. The writer describes it as “a comedy with teeth.”
The group meeting of five people who form the executive board for the liberal private Eureka Day School in Berkeley, California is holding a meeting in what looks like one of the school's rooms for children.
Its facilitator Don, the amiable Principal given an avuncular performance by Mark McKinney dressed in shorts and sandals, encourages everyone to have their say.
He explains they don’t have votes on the board as the school 'operates by consensus.' Meetings may start with him getting everyone to close their eyes for a quiet reflection and he likes to end meetings with a reading from the mystical poet Rumi.
Carina (Susan Kelechi Waston) is new to the school and its board though she knows of its reputation. She recalls her friend saying you can spot Eureka Day School kids because 'at soccer games, they always cheer when the other school scores.'
She is surprised by the discussions of the board that range from the school’s use of gender-neutral pronouns in referring to any child, to the argument about whether to add to the school’s long list of ethnic identities in registration forms the additional category of 'transracial adoptee'.
After all, it might seem unfair to have someone ending up in the category of 'other'.
Things become more awkward when a case of mumps in one of the school’s pupils prompts a letter from the City of Berkley Health Department, a letter whose advice to exclude unvaccinated children the board is uneasy about sending in its name to the parents.
To resolve the matter they decide to hold a 'community activated conversation' which takes the form of an online meeting with all the parents and a couple of advisors.
The board members gather in front of a laptop and while they talk to the camera, we see projected onto the wall behind them an escalating hilarious online polarised argument from those watching.
The audience laughs so much at the messages, we can hear hardly anything of the board’s conversation. Inevitably the meeting comes to an abrupt premature end, but not before the audience is practically rolling in the aisles with laughter, and needing the interval to recover.
The second half returns to the debate on vaccines among board members. Don convenes a meeting in which he says that 'no one here is a villain'.
This more intense discussion then centres on Carina, who has signed a parent’s petition in favour of a new school policy requiring vaccines from pupils attending school, and the board’s President Suzanne (Helen Hunt), one of the school’s long-standing members, who objects to the imposition, claiming it should be left to individual choice.
Carina thinks following the health department directive would be consistent with other things the school does such as teaching the conventional view of evolution rather than just leaving it up to parents to decide which version should be taught.
Don worries that unless the argument is resolved they will lose parents, making the school less financially viable. That would be a major problem given they have just spent so much on modifying bathrooms to make them suitable 'to all genders.'
The play’s satiric depiction of the board’s liberal sensibilities has steered our sympathies in the direction of Carina, but the writer shows a thoughtful sensitivity to both characters' positions.
In a very moving speech, Suzanne describes a tragic family experience.
She also points to strong reasons why we shouldn't take for granted what science says, reminding them of the way fossil fuel companies encouraged false science to cast doubt on the causes of climate change and certain drug companies promoted dangerously addictive painkillers that have damaged many lives.
For these and other reasons she argues they shouldn't make any parent 'feel pressured or shamed.'
The play’s light cartoonish depiction of the sometimes frustratingly chaotic nature of liberal attempts at democratic decision-making through arguments and debate makes it seem much shorter than its two hours running time including the interval.
But en route, this comedy of manners will have touched on debates about individual social justice versus collective safety, the extent to which the evidence of science is shaped by vested interest and the way the power of money can trump democratic decisions.
Whichever side of the arguments you are on, the play might still leave you pondering uneasily about the basis on which resolutions are achieved.
Keith
McKenna
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