Live controversy and online fury in EUREKA DAY

Here in Chicago, we sometimes get important plays before New York (recently Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins brilliant Purpose and Samuel D. Hunter’s bittersweet  Little Bear Ridge Road at Steppenwolf), but we often have to wait for local theatre companies to offer the best of what has made it to New York, usually from regional theatres elsewhere. Last season, the Goodman presented Jordan Harrison’s The Antiquities, a brilliant picture of where AI may lead us (extinction), and how we got to that point. Now Timeline Theatre and Broadway in Chicago are co-producing Jonathan Spector’s incisive and hilarious Eureka Day at the underused Broadway Playhouse, an excellent mid-sized venue for theatre in the heart of the city.

Eureka Day began life in 2018 in the Bay Area where it is set, moved to Off-Broadway, and won a Tony Award as Best Revival after its Broadway production in 2024. It was first produced and set before COVID, but the epidemic and the ascendance of an anti-vaxxer as our country’s health czar have given the play more resonance. The play makes us laugh at our country’s saddest tragedies, the inability to come to an agreement on crucial issues and the fury underlying current controversies. It begins as a satire on wacky liberals but expands to include everyone.

The setting is the library of Eureka Day school, a private school in an affluent bay area town. Shelves are filled with children’s books, reminding us that much of the behavior we will witness is far from mature. The library is the meeting place for the Executive Council of Eureka Day. At the first meeting we witness, the committee is trying to decide whether to add “transracial adoptee” to the long list of categories of inclusion the school publishes. If everyone should be heard and respected, shouldn’t every possible category be included? This silly but benign discussion gives us in the audience a chance to become acquainted with the characters. Don, the school principal, wants to keep everyone happy (an impossible task) and keep the school afloat financially. He feels the needed to read excerpts from Rumi at every meeting to establish his “with it” credentials. The only other male is Eli, who made a fortune in Silicon Valley and now is a stay-at-home dad. Eli is an expert at mansplaining and silencing the women in the room when he has an idea. Eli claims to be in an open marriage (his unseen wife Rebecca seems to disagree) and is conducting an affair with Meiko, a single mom. Meiko knits furiously as she gets more and more confused and upset by the discussions. Suzanne, the council president, is increasingly tyrannical while constantly voicing the need for everyone to respect others’ opinions. Carina, the newcomer to the committee, a Black lesbian, parries the racist assumptions of these proud liberals. 

Discussions get heated when an outbreak of mumps affects the school. The local government requires vaccination for students who have not built up immunity to the disease through exposure. Suzanne is an anti-vaxxer and bristles at any attempt to require immunization. The committee decides to sponsor a town hall to discuss the school’s policy toward vaccination. When the quarantine shuts the school, the town hall moves online. In a hilarious scene, the online conversation turns quickly into vituperation. All the platitudes about respect and inclusion are given the lie as parents go at each other in a volley of online insults. 

The guiding principle for the Executive Committee is consensus, not majority rule, but how can a group reach consensus if no one is willing to compromise? Nothing can change because Suzanne will never go along with the majority. For her, respect means accepting her point of view. However, Suzanne has failed to realize that money speaks even more authoritatively than she. Eli, whose son has become seriously ill through exposure to the mumps (probably from Eli’s girlfriend’s daughter), will write a large check to the school if vaccinations are required. Suzanne still insists on having her way until a copy of the Bylaws saves the day. 

The resolution of Eureka Day offers a complex message. Suzanne is a tyrant, but if one claims that all points of view are valid, a dubious proposition, then she has been unfairly silenced. When the Council meets at the beginning of the next school year, Suzanne isn’t there. I would guess that most of the members of the audience for this play are on the side of vaccination, but we live in a country in which the health system is run by an anti-vaxxer. We now live in a country run by a man who delights in stirring up hate and the kind of online vituperation we see in Eureka Day. We in the audience howl with laughter at the online cruelty of the Eureka Day School parents, but this kind of hatred is eating away at our social fabric.

Majority rule is necessary because consensus on issues is often impossible, particularly in our culture. Even majority rule depends on our willingness to accept the validity of the vote. Our current administration is constantly sowing doubt about the democratic process. It is ironic that in Eureka Day a promise of money from a Silicon Valley billionaire changes the way the Executive Council operates. We old time liberals in the audience may applaud the outcome, but we see now that tech billionaires are not always the best people to put in positions of power over anything but their own businesses. 

Eureka Day is funny, but the aftertaste is bitter. Kudos to TimeLine Theatre for such an excellent production of a play that offers laughter and deep thought about where we are now as a nation.