By all appearances, the Eureka Day faculty in Oakland, California, is a progressive, welcoming, warm-hearted place. The cabinets of the elementary faculty’s library, as staged at Samuel J Friedman Theatre in a pointy new play by Jonathan Spector, boast a colourful, cacophonous overflow of books. There’s a outstanding “social justice” part; the partitions are bedecked with posters celebrating the likes of Maya Angelou, Michelle Obama, Cesar Chavez and the idea of DEI. (Convincing set design by Todd Rosenthal.) The college’s puttering five-person govt board – typically, on this play directed by Anna D Shapiro, sitting on chairs meant for kids – are adept on the language of deference for the sake of battle avoidance: “deeper studying”, “holding area”, “in my private expertise”, and on and on.
If this all sounds tedious, properly, so is the high-wire act of making an attempt to not offend anybody. Fortunately for audiences and a primary scene that teeters on the sting of caricature – it’s too straightforward to snigger at woke-addled characters who maintain “group activated conversations” – concord is tough to uphold in, you realize, these occasions. It’s the 2018-19 faculty 12 months, and Eureka Day faces an outbreak of the mumps.
The best way this seemingly simple situation – well being department-ordered quarantine after which return for vaccinated college students – mutates right into a livid beast of battle is a devilishly pleasurable factor to behold, owing to Spector’s on-the-pulse script, which sharpens because the viewpoints polarize, and a slate of excellently balanced performances. Carina (Amber Grey), a brand new guardian to the varsity and the lone Black board member, assumes Eureka Day will comply with normal well being steerage. Meiko (Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz), guardian of a younger youngster with mumps, and longtime worker Suzanne (a standout Jessica Hecht), are extra reluctant, viewing vaccinations as a values, private liberty alternative – and Eureka Day as accepting of all values. Thomas Middleditch, of HBO’s Silicon Valley fame, performs an early tech big worker now proudly a “full-time father” recognized to offer monetary items to the varsity, pending everybody getting alongside. Beleaguered principal Don (Invoice Irwin, with the bodily bearing of a person preventing too laborious to take up much less area), assumes this could all be solved by that nice panacea: the digital city corridor.
That scene, wherein the “feedback” show behind the actors (a formidable quantity of faux names and profiles to create; projection design by David Bengali), marks a turning level, each for these naively, self-importantly well mannered characters – you may think about, and have in all probability witnessed, how this shortly devolves from dialog to fees of fascism – and the for the play’s rhythm, which settles into one thing thornier, sharper and extra stunning than somebody citing the Holocaust. Spector, who relies in Oakland, has a knack for demonstrating how a lot of “woke” language – and I’m utilizing that phrase within the aesthetic sense, not as a touch upon politics – is solely ego dressed up as humility, a way of self-importance derived from the efficiency of tolerance. How tolerance itself generally is a colorless, anodyne idea when it turns into a worth unto itself. And the way nothing inflames tensions, digs in heels and flashes tooth like “what’s greatest for the youngsters”.
It’s a tough stability to point out and never condemn. You’ll be able to in all probability guess the place my sympathies lie, by way of the vaccination “debates”, however Spector well avoids straightforward dunks as Eureka Day’s fault strains turn out to be canyons, although no one on the board needs to confess as a lot. Nobody is a villain right here; if something comes off poorly, it’s reverence for battle avoidance within the identify of group. Each character will get to land a good punch, or make an excellent level, in addition to seem each risible and ridiculous. At Eureka Day, as in most locations, most individuals are well-meaning, typically deeply misguided, making an attempt to make sense of what restricted data and life expertise they’ve. Trauma scalds and morphs. And humor, at the least on this exceptional new play, in some way transcends the third rail of guardian debates.
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