Nate Corddry, Rick Holmes, Cherise Boothe, Mia Barron, Camille Chen (photo by Jeff-Lorch)
Reviewed by Steven Leigh Morris
The Pasadena Playhouse
Through October 5
RECOMMENDED
Jonathan Spector’s nervy comedy, ostensibly about the vaccines debate (originally set in 2017 but updated to 2018, as Covid was expanding, thereby accommodating the play’s satirical punchline), was first produced at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre, before transferring to Broadway via NYC’s Manhattan Theatre Club. It’s now on a return bounce to California in director Teddy Bergman’s scintillating production.
In seven scenes, without intermission, Spector lays out a neoclassical structure. The action is set in the library of Berkeley’s private Eureka Day elementary school, where the principal, Don (Rick Holmes), and Board President, Suzanne (Mia Barron), are joined by stay-at-home dad Eli (Nate Cordry) and parents Meiko and Carina (respectively Camille Chen and Cherise Boothe). Together they form the school’s Executive Committee, initially hammering out an online “drop down menu” for new parents seeking admission to the school for their children. Kailyn Leilani puts in a cameo performance near play’s end. This ensemble is pitch perfect.
A note on Wilson Chin’s set, which features “reading” and “social justice” sections; Chin frames the room within the architecture of an unspecified church – which this building was before Eureka Day took over the church campus. Let us pray.
The satire is excruciatingly funny at the get-go. The lingo (which Spector nails) – of “inclusivity” and “being heard” and “unpacking” such and such an issue – perfectly encapsulates the faux politeness masking the waves of tyranny that lurk beneath the surface. You might wonder skeptically (as I did), oh God, is this another comedic scapegoating of woke-ism? Is this the comedy we need right now, arriving at precisely the moment when the Left itself is almost literally being accused of cancelling free speech, indulging in hate speech, terrorizing the nation, and even of murder? All of which conveniently permits the accusers to cancel free speech and terrorize the nation with its own variant of hate speech in the name of restricting hate speech. This storied tradition of conflation leaves actual evidence gasping for life like fish strewn onto a pier’s deck.
The parody of the Left starts to wear thin until Principal Don reads a letter/edict from Berkeley’s health department director, reporting that one of the school’s children has the mumps; the letter mandates proof of vaccination for all of the school’s children before they be permitted to return to school. And here the classical debate structure takes hold, given how Suzanne finds this edict to be fascistic government overreach – that instead, parents should choose the means by which they wish to protect their children. If she were a living character rather than a fictional one, she’d surely be serving as an advisor to RFK Jr.’s Health and Human Services Department.
Despite digging deeply into Suzanne’s earnest, emotional convictions for endangering the health of the school’s children, playwright Spector tilts the argument against Suzanne, which is where his play is more pedantic than dialectic; more Moliere and Brecht than Sophocles. To do otherwise would leave him, and his play, out on a limb, calling into question the raft of scientific evidence that demonstrates, despite occasional statistical aberrations, that vaccines are safe and effective. That’s not the entirety of Spector’s point, thank goodness. If it were, it would be a good argument and less so a good play.
Eureka Day sparkles because it’s also a play about how we got to a point in our culture where science and expertise came to be so degraded, how a public servant and esteemed scientist such as Dr. Anthony Fauci could receive death threats because he recommended that during a pandemic, people protect themselves, and others, by wearing masks. Are we really back to the days of the Scopes Monkey Trial? Yes, we are. At first glance, Eureka Day seems locked in time, but it’s not about an “issue,” it’s about how and why the culture has gone to war with itself over such issues.
Eli tries to conduct a live stream to discuss (in an inclusive way, of course) the health director’s edict, though Don has ineffectively argued that it’s not really up for discussion. Still, everyone must be heard. Comments on the live stream are like the subtext behind Eli’s feeble attempts to maintain decorum. They are like the subtext of our entire culture. These live stream comments are broadcast on a screen behind the actors — punctuated by one parent’s constant “thumbs up” emojis, supporting commenters’ increasingly vitriolic arguments.
Here are two samples from the live stream that reflect the collapse of public civility. During the live stream, the people in the library from where it’s being broadcast, people whom we see trying to wrest control from the online mob, can barely be heard, which is precisely the point:
Arnold Filmore Just answer honestly: would you rather have measles or autism?
Orson Mankel Just answer honestly: were you dropped on your head as a child?
Christian Burns TRUE FACTS: Moonlanding wasn’t faked, 9/11 wasn’t an inside job, Global Warming is real, Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism
And later in this dance of death:
Josephine Lawrence Breaking News: Human Beings survived MILLIONS of years before Western Medicine.
Myla Townes And half of all women died in childbirth!
Darla Campese Wake up!!! The answer is not to get another dose of a failed vaccine.
Christian Burns Remember that time I got crippled from polio? Oh, no wait. I didn’t. Cause I got FUCKING VACCINATED.
And so it goes: We believe what we believe because we feel it to be true. Before we were a civilization in decline, feelings would not have been sufficient to pass for veracity.
Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. Opens Sun., Sept. 14; Wed., Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Thurs., 7 pm, Sat.-Sun., 2 pm; thru Oct. 5. www.pasadenaplayhouse.org Running time: 100 minutes with no intermission
