Review: 'Eureka Day,' a comedy of woke manners, wades into the vaccine debate at Pasadena Playhouse
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“Eureka Day,” a comedy by Jonathan Spector that wades into the debate on vaccine mandates, has only become more explosively topical since its 2018 premiere at Aurora Theatre Company, in Berkeley, Calif.The play, which is having its Los Angeles premiere at Pasadena Playhouse, seems like it could have been commissioned to skewer this destructive, benighted and completely mortifying anti-science moment.But Spector wrote the work before the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed our political demons and made stupid great again.“Eureka Day” takes its name from the fictional private elementary school in Berkeley that is the setting for what is both a satire of anti-vaccine culture and a comedy of woke manners.
Held in a determinedly cheerful Bay Area classroom (brightly summoned with all the necessary social justice touches by set designer Wilson Chin), the play unfolds as a series of meetings of the school’s executive committee.Don (Rick Holmes), the head of school, is ostensibly in charge, though his duck-and-cover strategy for dealing with conflict has a way of protracting problems.Four parents, one a newcomer still acclimating to the school’s strenuously progressive rules, are part of the executive brain trust.
The first discussion of the new school year is relatively innocuous though no less testing for being so.Eli (Nate Corddry), a stay-at-home dad who made a fortune at Facebook, has proposed adding “Transracial Adoptee” to a drop-down menu on an admissions form already burgeoning with identity subcategories.Suzanne (Mia Barron), a mother who has sent so many children through Eureka Day that she has a proprietary attitude about the place, doesn’t think this additional category is necessary.
She’s sensitive — self-consciously so — to Eli’s good intentions, but she persuades the group that no changes are necessary at this time.“Persuades” might be a euphemism....