{"id":2028650,"date":"2025-09-17T10:59:54","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T10:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2028650"},"modified":"2025-09-17T10:59:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T10:59:54","slug":"eureka-day-review-vaccine-debate-erupts-at-woke-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/eureka-day-review-vaccine-debate-erupts-at-woke-school\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Eureka Day’ review: Vaccine debate erupts at woke school"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cEureka Day,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cEureka Day\u201d 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\u2019s executive committee.<\/p>\n

Don (Rick Holmes<\/a>), 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\u2019s strenuously progressive rules, are part of the executive brain trust. <\/p>\n

The first discussion of the new school year is relatively innocuous though no less testing for being so. Eli (Nate Corddry<\/a>), a stay-at-home dad who made a fortune at Facebook, has proposed adding \u201cTransracial Adoptee\u201d to a drop-down menu on an admissions form already burgeoning with identity subcategories.<\/p>\n

Suzanne (Mia Barron<\/a>), a mother who has sent so many children through Eureka Day that she has a proprietary attitude about the place, doesn\u2019t think this additional category is necessary. She\u2019s sensitive \u2014 self-consciously so \u2014 to Eli\u2019s good intentions, but she persuades the group that no changes are necessary at this time.<\/p>\n

\u201cPersuades\u201d might be a euphemism. Suzanne has an iron will that she thinly veils with a solicitous smile.<\/p>\n

One of the quirks of the executive committee is that it operates by consensus rather than a majority vote. This can lead to some \u201cvery long meetings,\u201d Suzanne informs Carina (Cherise Boothe<\/a>), the new Black lesbian mom who recently moved from Maryland.<\/p>\n

Suzanne claims to want everyone to feel \u201cempowered,\u201d though her controlling temperament pokes through her welcoming facade. Meiko (Camille Chen), who knits during meetings with a subtle air of annoyance, has to loudly ask Suzanne to please stop speaking on her behalf.<\/p>\n

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<\/picture>\n
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Cherise Boothe in \u201cEureka Day\u201d at Pasadena Playhouse.<\/p>\n

(Jeff Lorch)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

These blind spots, a standard ingredient of comic characters, are particularly glaring in Suzanne\u2019s case. When Carina tells her that she didn\u2019t homeschool her son for kindergarten but sent him to public school, Suzanne is mildly horrified. She also makes the assumption that Carina is not a \u201cfull pay\u201d family.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s even something passive-aggressive about Suzanne\u2019s show of concern for all viewpoints, a trait that becomes all the more conspicuous after a crisis erupts at the school. A mumps outbreak forces Eureka Day to temporarily close its doors.<\/p>\n

Don informs the executive committee that the health department has issued a letter stipulating what parents must do for their child to return to school. The subject isn\u2019t open for debate, but Suzanne is uneasy about how this letter is being \u201cframed.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s an advocate of parental choice when it comes to vaccines, not trusting the experts who have determined that only children who are vaccinated can return to school when there\u2019s a risk of infection. She believes vaccines stand in the way of natural herd immunity.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Mia <\/picture>\n
\n

Mia Barron, left, Rick Holmes, Cherise Boothe, and Camille Chen in \u201cEureka Day\u201d at Pasadena Playhouse.<\/p>\n

(Jeff Lorch)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

Meiko is less vociferous in her anti-vaccine stance than Suzanne, but she has her own skepticism about modern medicine and doesn\u2019t want to be told what to do. When her daughter develops mumps, it becomes an emergency for Eli, who\u2019s been having an affair with Meiko. The two arrange their assignations around playdates, and their kids were recently in contact. <\/p>\n

Eli, who\u2019s married but in a complicated open relationship situation with his increasingly resentful wife, would rather not have to choose sides in the vaccine mandate debate. But when his son gets sick after spending time with Meiko\u2019s unvaccinated daughter, he finds he can no longer stay on the fence. <\/p>\n

The well-programmed comedy hilariously runs its course in the leadership vacuum created by the school\u2019s over-accommodating culture. Don is so worried about seeming to favor one parental faction over another that he allows Suzanne to become the dominant voice in the room.<\/p>\n

The production, directed by Teddy Bergman, has a field day with the woke-run-amok ethos of Eureka Day, where kids at the school cheer the other team\u2019s goals at soccer games. But Bergman\u2019s approach is more schematic than Anna D. Shapiro\u2019s Tony-winning Broadway revival.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the urgency of the moment calls for a clearer moral stand, but the comedy has lost some nuance. On Broadway, Jessica Hecht made Suzanne seem totally oblivious to her own rage. She really believed that she was seeking consensus, tolerant of all perspectives as long as they didn\u2019t impinge on her beliefs, the origins of which are poignantly related later in the play.<\/p>\n

The fury of Barron\u2019s Suzanne is much more on the surface. The humor is more direct \u2014 Barron can be very funny \u2014 but the debate is less trenchant. Bergman\u2019s production, marred by blasts of jarring folk music between scene transitions, is a little too on the nose.<\/p>\n

Boothe\u2019s Carina, by far the strongest performance in the cast, is our rational surrogate in the play \u2014 a parent trying to fit in without betraying her intelligence or child\u2019s welfare. I appreciated the way Holmes lets us come to our own conclusions about Don\u2019s go-along-to-get-along style of running the ship. <\/p>\n

Meiko is woefully underwritten, and Chen\u2019s performance, while amusing when Meiko erupts, sometimes seems disconnected. Corddry refuses to play a tech industry clich\u00e9, but Eli, a bland creep, comes off as unnecessarily vague.<\/p>\n

Bergman has trouble locating that sweet spot between jokey exaggeration and multidimensional authenticity. Comedy trades in types, but the cast could have benefited from more fine-tuning.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that\u2019s why the funniest scene in the play involves the live chat portion of a virtual meeting that\u2019s organized for Eureka Day parents alarmed about the quarantine situation. Avatars square off against one another in a vaccine debate free-for-all that puts the lie to the school\u2019s \u201ccommunity of respect\u201d motto with uncensored savagery punctuated by missile-like emoticons.<\/p>\n

\u201cEureka Day\u201d will make you laugh, but how much this production will make you think is an open question.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

‘Eureka Day’ <\/p>\n

Where:<\/b> Pasadena Playhouse, S. 39 South El Molino Ave., Pasadena<\/p>\n

When:<\/b> 8 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays, 7 p.m. Thursdays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. (Check for exceptions)<\/p>\n

Tickets: <\/b>Start at $40<\/p>\n

Contact:<\/b> (626) 356-7529 or pasadenaplayhouse.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Running time:<\/b> 1 hour, 35 minutes (no intermission)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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