Review: In Eureka Day on Broadway, Rich Liberals Debate About Vaccines

We’ve all been in that meeting, where a minor point of language or protocol becomes the wrench in the gears that grinds the whole machine to a halt. How long before some brave engineer reaches his own hand in to extract it — or leaves everything to rust?

Seemingly a standard 90-minute issue play addressing the topic of vaccine skepticism, Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day, now on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre under the banner of Manhattan Theatre Club, is actually a blunt yet effective portrait of power in allegedly egalitarian spaces.

It’s set in the wealthy liberal enclave of Berkeley, California, where a group of parents sit on the executive committee of the private, scrupulously progressive Eureka Day School. “We only make decisions by consensus,” Meiko (Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz) tells the newest member, Carina (Amber Gray). That’s all well and good when the deliberation is over something trivial, like whether to include “transracial adoptee” in the drop-down menu of identities in the admissions form, as one family has requested. “Just because one family wants something doesn’t make it right for the whole community,” notes Suzanne (Jessica Hecht), a founding mother of the school who has sent multiple children there, and who therefore has decades of experience building consensus. But we instantly know that this dramatic thesis will come back to haunt her.

And so it does when an outbreak of mumps hospitalizes the son of wealthy tech worker Eli (Thomas Middleditch) and prompts a fierce debate about whether or not the school should mandate vaccination. One group of parents threatens to pull their children (and tuition money) if it doesn’t, a prospect that terrifies Don (Bill Irwin), an administrator tasked with operating this educational utopia within a market economy. But Suzanne finds herself the champion of parents who don’t want any outside force making decisions about what goes into their kids’ bodies.

Eureka Day is a useful reminder that the fight between vaccinators and skeptics was, until recently, an internecine conflict on the left between houses that believe in science and those that embrace a woo-woo alternative. The action takes place in 2018, before Covid, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was still a Democrat (the play made its off-Broadway debut with Colt Coeur in 2019, and it’s easy to see how its subject matter has appreciated in value enough to merit a Broadway run).

Hecht perfectly embodies the latter group with her mousey demeanor and downy voice, which finds its greatest expression in tiny yelps of joy and hums of empathy. Clint Ramos costumes her in long colorful skirts and a fuzzy sweater that appears to be locally sourced from rescue alpacas. Suzanne informs Carina that many of the books in the library, where they meet, were donated by her family, including the bulk of the most prominent shelf, labeled “social justice” (on-the-nose set design by Todd Rosenthal for an on-the-nose play).

It all tells the story of a progressive saint and deft political operator. Hecht’s Suzanne is confident that the meek shall inherit, and uses her little voice to maximum effect, most memorably in a monologue explaining her personal reasons for avoiding vaccines. No matter where you fall on this issue, if it was delivered directly to your face, your only response would be stunned silence — unless you’re a complete monster.

Director Anna D. Shapiro does a fine job presenting the illusion of balance when, in fact, Spector has his thumb on the scale the entire time — at least when it comes to the vaccine issue. But that’s not really the most interesting aspect of Eureka Day, a dark comedy shining a light on the side doors to power and the cathartic allure of invective.

This is clearest in Shapiro’s collaboration with projection designer David Bengali in a scene depicting a community meeting conducted via video call. Bengali projects the live chat on the upstage wall, which instantly mesmerizes the audience, sapping all focus from the actors. The biggest laughs and gasps derive from unspoken lines like, “Remember that time I got crippled from polio? Oh, no wait. I didn’t. Cause I got FUCKING VACCINATED.”

The audience howls at this sick burn (written by an offstage character named “Christian Burns” — as I said, it’s an unsubtle play) and it’s abundantly clear how easily dazzled the educated classes are by stylish (if unsubstantial) rhetoric. Eureka Day produces plenty of laughter, but it’s the hollow expression of a certain type of righteousness that is increasingly useless as manners and conventions break down.

Everyone in the cast works hard to endow their pencil sketch characters with flesh-and-blood humanity. Gray embodies the respectful newcomer who nevertheless won’t be pushed around. Middleditch allows us to see a man whose animal urges strike up against the flinty progressive ideology he has embraced, threatening to ignite. Irwin brings much-needed physicality to this talky play, conveying with his body the farce of administration. But I was most drawn to Yakura-Kurtz’s Meiko, who holds back for much of the play until the dam bursts. “I think we just have so much fucking hubris,” she says, speaking for me and much of Western drama.

The Athenians, those pioneers of both theater and democracy, knew the folly of reaching for godlike power and had a solution for citizens who tried. Unsurprisingly, ostracism features in the resolution of Eureka Day, a play that ends with a punchline prayer for “clear skies and smooth sailing” in the 2019-20 school year. Ha.