Theatre review: Eureka Day

Jonathan Spector's Eureka Day dates from pre-Covid days, and its story would probably play out a bit differently if it didn't, but maybe not that differently: The crux of the plot revolves around vaccination, but its wider themes look at the best intentions of avowed liberals, and whether they can leave the door open for things to go seriously wrong. Rob Howell's bright and colourful set is a classroom in the titular private California primary school, and the scenes are meetings of the five-strong Executive Committee, led by old hippie Don (Mark McKinney,) who runs the school, the rest being parents. Suzanne (Helen Hunt) is such a stalwart of the school, the only half-joking rumour is she had IVF later in life only so she could still be involved with the committee. When she isn't knitting furiously in the corner, single mother May (Kirsten Foster) is having an affair with stay-at-home dad (because he's a millionnaire) Eli (Ben Schnetzer.)

Carina (Susan Kelechi Watson) has only recently transferred her child to Eureka Day, and has just taken up the fifth place on the committe, so we get to see their painfully earnest, New Agey attempts to reach a consensus on what the racial identification options should be on a drop-down menu through her eyes.

To be honest this opening scene made me think I really wasn't going to get along with Eureka Day; it's a pretty relentless list of clichés about the left wing that feels like it's ticking off a Daily Mail list of targets - everything from gluten-free doughnuts to gender-neutral bathrooms is a punchline. The play probably slightly predates the right's use of "woke" as meaning "whatever it is we don't like this week," otherwise that would doubtless be a target for mockery as well. Things only start to improve when Spector gets to the actual heart of what he's interrogating about the left, rather than just taking cheap shots at its good intentions.

That heart being the fact that those good intentions about free speech and openness to everyone's point of view can let in some genuinely dangerous possibilities, like when May's daughter contracts mumps and the local health authority closes the school. It turns out half the parents, including May and Suzanne, have refused to give their children the MMR vaccine, and the outbreak threatens to become an epidemic. Things get dark when Eli's son, who's been vaccinated but is in the 12% not to respond to it, has to be hospitalised.

Katy Rudd's production is one where the scenes vary wildly in effectiveness, whether they be comic or dramatic. The undoubted standout scene is a Zoom conference where the committee, from the school, address the parents at home. What they have to say is anyone's guess because Andrzej Goulding's video design projects the parents' typed comments onto the back wall, as their discussion moves from irrelevant non sequiturs about soup to arguments about the topic at hand, from requests for civility to outright abuse. Between the familiarity of the escalation and the wittiness of the comebacks it's the funniest scene, with laughter at the person who responds to everything with a thumbs-up drowning out anything the actors on stage are actually saying. I don't often get an excuse to name-check a casting director, but surely Jim Carnahan's biggest achievement here is finding a five-strong cast, never mind a starry one, with small enough egos to willingly get upstaged by emojis for 20 minutes.

Even when the cast actually get to hold the attention this is an ensemble piece, although Hunt does get a quiet moment to take centre-stage and give her anti-vaxxer character a bit of depth and context - though Spector does then let Watson gently but firmly get the last word on the matter. Schnetzer gets a bit of progression as his character matures through adversity, and Foster gets a quieter development as May faces the fact that her choices have consequences for others. McKinney draws the short straw - Don's aversion to conflict and attempts to calm the waters with meaningless platitudes are funny at first, but like much of the play become as irritating here as these things do in real life. A very uneven couple of hours all things told - the humour ranges from the lazy to the inspired, and for all the sneering at people who try to give every side a voice, Spector doesn't get far beyond doing just that.

Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector is booking until the 31st of October at the Old Vic.

Running time: 2 hours including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.