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Jessica Hecht and Amber Gray Are The Shining Stars of Eureka Day
December 16, 2024, 8:51.17 pm ET

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Photo: Jeremy Daniel

By Brian Scott Lipton

Great theater is often meant to make us uncomfortable, which Chicago-based director Anna D. Shapiro knows better than almost anyone, having helmed such shattering plays as “August: Osage County,” “The Minutes” and “Pass Over,” all of which left audiences squirming in their seats. Unfortunately, her latest project, the Broadway debut of Jonathan Spector’s much-lauded 2018 satire “Eureka Day,” now at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, will make many of us uncomfortable, for all the wrong reasons.

At its most basic level, “Eureka Day” involves five people who make up the committee that runs the seemingly ultra-liberal Eureka Day School in Berkeley, California. And while the show’s starry cast – including the great Bill Irwin and television favorite Thomas Middleditch -- may have looked good on paper, only the always amazing Jessica Hecht, creating a multi-dimensional portrait of passive-aggressive, longtime board member Suzanne, and the ever-reliable Amber Gray as level-headed new parent Carina (the ultimate voice of reason) find the right tone for the work.

Admittedly, it may be Spector’s point that these five people couldn’t run a taco truck, never mind a school. But it’s also true that given the state of education in 2024 America, it’s hard to laugh sometimes at their ineptitude – Irwin’s dithering headmaster, Don, becomes increasingly hard to watch – as well as their quasi-idealism. (Who makes decisions by “full consensus”? No one, nowhere.)

More disturbing, especially in 2024, is what the committee ultimately argues about: Whether to require all children to get the MMR vaccine, a crisis precipitated when the daughter of single mom and board member Makeo (Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz, who comes off flakier than a freshly baked croissant) comes down with mumps.

Her child then seemingly passes the disease to the son of her fellow board member – and sometime lover – Eli (Middleditch, who severely underplays his admittedly underwritten role), a former tech bro turned stay-at-home dad who mostly thinks with his little head rather than the big one if he thinks at all.

Soon, the school is shut down entirely as we learn through a hilariously vitriolic virtual town meeting – the play’s comic high point by far – many of the parents are anti-vaxxers. Of course, rather than really discussing the issue and finding a solution, they resort to name-calling and threats of litigation, make unwanted references to Heidegger, or ignore the situation entirely. (You may never look at a thumbs up emoji the same way again!)

Meanwhile, the board, for their part, seems far more worried about the financial health of the school than the physical health of their students, or in the case of Suzanne, furthering her own personal agenda. (Hecht’s brilliant delivery of a small monologue explaining her “reasoning” is heartbreaking and slightly terrifying.)

But here’s the biggest problem of all: as Covid still looms, the concept of people resisting and refusing vaccines isn’t likely to engender much sympathy in New York theatergoers (many of whom have started to wear masks again). Worse yet, with the prospect of vaccine-denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr. becoming the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services – and asking the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine – the issue no longer feels fit for satire.

Ultimately, even in a better production than this one, the day to produce “Eureka Day” has passed.

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