Theater Review: Eureka Day hysterically tackles the anti-vacc movement

Eureka Day

Written by Jonathan Spector

Directed by Adrienne Campbell-Hoyt

Colt Coeur Theater Company

Walkerspace, Manhattan

September 13, 2019

The title of this play is a double entendre. It’s set in a classroom of the Eureka Day School, a private elementary school modeled on a Waldorf School. But, in the process of the play, a few characters also have Eureka! moments as they wrestle with the thorny issue of as a crisis of a mumps outbreak among unvaccinated kids splits the oh-so-tolerant parents into virulent camps. This is indeed a hot button issue, as described in this recent article in Politico .  Some of the extreme language referenced in the article (e.g. comparisons to Nazis) comes up in the play as the parents wrestle with the issue. The playwright is based in the San Francisco bay area, and the play speaks the progressive language (often mockingly) so associated with that region. It’s a very funny play, especially in Act 1 as the parental conflict envelops the Board of the school. The five onstage Board members call an online community meeting (live is out of the question, given a quarantine). Here, director Adreinne Campbell-Hoyt is brilliant. The intended calming platitudes spoken by the on-stage board members play out against an increasingly militant and hostile online chat between the parents. These brilliantly alternate between “let’s get along” and “we all understand” comments and “you must have been dropped on your head as a child” and “your son probably should die of the mumps” broadsides as things heat up. These are paced in a rapid-fire, but subtly paced tempo, punctuated with one mom’s monochrome thumbs up emojis, agreeing with everyone. This provides a real tour-de-force climax to Act 1, the equal of the best Rossini comic operas, or Mozart’s ensemble scene from The Marriage of Figaro in its timing and crackerjack dialogue. The playwright, director, and five actors should all be applauded for this wonderful theatrical episode.

The play loses a bit of its momentum in Act 2, as it tries to be more sympathetic to the different sides. There is a familiar subplot of hypocracy among the politically correct, as one board member uses racist language towards another. The playwright tries to show us how a devastating personal experience of one board member led to her stand on the issue. But all of this has been dealt with before in old jury dramas like Twelve Angry Men.  If the playwright’s intent was to make me see both sides of the issue, he failed. I remained just as mystified about the anti-vaccination attitudes of highly educated people as I was before, and the playwright in the end seems to fall into the pro-vaccination camp. But that wonderful first act made me admire this playwright’s ability to write superb comic dialogue lacerating issues of our time. I’d like to see him take on Trumpistas or NIMBYism in the liberal suburbs.