School is in session! Manhattan Theatre Club brings Jonathan Spector’s play Eureka Day, directed by Anna D. Shapiro, to Broadway.
What's it all about? Eureka Day is a private California elementary school with a Board of Directors that values inclusion above all else – that is, until an outbreak of the mumps forces everyone in the community to reconsider the school’s liberal vaccine policy. As cases rise, the board realizes with horror that they’ve got to do what they swore they never would: make a choice that won’t please absolutely everybody.
Despite its familiar subject matter, Spector has explained that he wrote the play long before the COVID pandemic.
Before Broadway, the comedy had its world premiere at Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley, California as part of their 2017-2018 season and was commissioned through their Originate+Generate program. It went on to have its east coast premiere off-Broadway at Walkerspace in 2019, and opened at the Old Vic in London in 2022. It arrives on Broadway with an all new cast.
The way this seemingly straightforward issue – health department-ordered quarantine and then return for vaccinated students – mutates into a furious beast of conflict is a devilishly pleasurable thing to behold, owing to Spector’s on-the-pulse script, which sharpens as the viewpoints polarize, and a slate of excellently balanced performances.
Quick, think of something really humorous about vaccinations. No? Me neither, but playwright Jonathan Spector has done us all a favor and molded one of the most divisive, inane, grotesque and newly, resurgent issues of the day and polished it into a shiny, insightful and damn funny little gem so that all of us can ogle and ponder and reconsider just how in the name of Jonas Salk did we get here.
2024 | Broadway |
MTC Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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