Hypocrisy proves hilarious in Eureka Day

Photos: Jeremy Daniel

When I was a journalist covering various downtown New York City communities, I did everything from police/crime blotter to profiles, including covering the local Little League for one particularly enlightened community. They called in their scores every week and we covered the games, including who scored runs and other highlights. But one day, they parent in charge called to let me know they had decided to “stop keeping score” and to stop reporting scores. I said the kids were probably still keeping score, so they would still know who won. But he said scores turned some people into winners and others into losers. In the interest of equity, or for whatever reason, they would no longer officially keep or report scores. They felt good about their decision. They would no longer be part of something that made anybody feel "bad."

Those parents would likely feel very much at home at the school that’s the focus of Eureka Day, playing at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Written by Jonathan Spector and directed by Anna D. Shapiro, it is a truly hilarious skewering of politically correct parenting. A play about hypocrisy, and how people who pretend to be kind often harbor a somewhat animal, emotional core, it shows us colorfully, cheerfully dressed parents in a colorful, if childish physical and, maybe, mental space. We see a standout cast create a group of parents who, really, are as childish as the furniture in which they sit in the library of a private school with the words “social justice” written on one shelf. The school recently presented Peter Pan in outer space: That way everybody could fly. Say no more?

If you want to see a great comic cast, and a show with some emotion and a very light touch, not giving us a joke jukebox, but some humanity, despite the stereotypes, and somewhat superficial portrayals, Eureka Day is your play and place. A play without intermission, it moves quickly, as an outbreak (not Covid) arrives and spreads through the school. They are very Sixties spirits, Baby Boomers who have strong beliefs that often focus on very trivial things. While people once fought for the right to vote, they fight for the right to add a new demographic category to the drop down menu people get when enrolling. They are so in favor of freedom that they don’t want to force people to be vaccinated. They have a lot of convictions, no courage, a lot of sanctimony with no soul.

As the outbreak spreads (mumps, not Covid), emotions flare and people pierce the supercilious shell in which they encase themselves. And in what may be the funniest scene on Broadway in a long time, we see the board members conduct a meaningless meeting while we see bubbles from the virtual chat pop up, as an increasingly bellicose group of parents go from civilized to virtual cannibals on the attack. When someone makes a reference to a Nazi, someone else notes that the dialogue, at last, has produced the obligatory reference to a Nazi. It’s a scene about text and subtext. While the Baby Boomers leading the meeting drone on with self-important claptrap, the ids of the world, emboldened by the near anonymity of being online, absolutely explode, debating vaccines, and insulting each other. This is who these people really are beneath the veneer of polite privilege.

The board members of the Eureka Day School, in California, of course, are so removed from reality that they focus not on real problems, but the perennial pitfalls of those seeking to be politically correct - rather than actually correct. In other words, appearing correct matters more than being it. Don't do the right thing, as Spike Lee says. Say the right thing or better yet, say nothing. That's all that counts. When the play begins, the board, is meeting, including one African American woman, played by Amber Gray, who is repeatedly dismissed, talked over, mistaken for a financial aid recipient, and otherwise subjected to the slings and arrows of outrageous stereotypes.

She maintains her dignity, although if anything, is overly polite, despite many opportunities to go into overdrive due to the indignities of kind people’s hurtful comments, always made with good intentions. As Bill Irwin reminds us, everybody has good intentions. It’s just their actions that are awful, we might add. Most of the play is presented with the cast seated, a position of weakness, makng them even smaller, as if they are infants not the adults that they ought to be.

We find our board members (who decide everything by consensus, of course, because everyone must agree) going over the ethnic categories which people select when they join the school, debating what and whether to add to the drop down menu. As Jessica Hecht, who plays an endearing if flawed parent, reminds us, even cops don’t ask you if you’re adopted when they stop you, so why should the school? These people , and they are people, cannot distinguish from what matters and what doesn’t. At a time when the democratic party might better be described as the demographic party, the board members are so afraid of antagonizing anyone or each other that they are terrified of actually saying anything. Words, words, words? They live in a world where emojis have replaced emotions, including a hilarious scene where we see the chat above while a live conversation unfurls on stage.

The acting is pitch perfect, like a singer who hits every note, and beyond top notch, endowing the characters with more humanity, possibly, than they might have on the page. Jessica Hecht as a protective parent with a slightly condescening, sweet, sincere smile, concerned that vaccines may do more harm than good, is frankly funny and funny while being frank. She seems so sincere, yet casually dismissive of the black member. She’s able to cram so much humanity into one line, leaving us laughing, not from a joke, but because of the two-faced truths of kind people who can be so cruel. We laugh at and with her and her understated yet intense delivery. These people think of themselves as one thing. We see quite another.

Bill Irwin as the group leader manages to say absolutely nothing with a passionate intensity. He is the politician of the room who wants to please everybody, never take a stand, and compliment every person, like a PR person unable to actually address reality. He is someone who, if he was the captain of the Titanic, would have said there is no need to worry: Our good intentions will overpower the iceberg. When he scrawls gigantic notes on sheets of paper, they are entirely immense and entirely illegible, mirroring his inability to communicate. He pretentiously quotes Rumi (not Roomi, the website to find roommates) as he says and does nothing, but is so likeable, loveable and eager to be liked. He is the poster child for political correctness, interrupting himself as if finishing a sentence could somehow expose him to public judgment. He would never hurt a fly, but he is also incapable of doing anything to help another human being.

Thomas Middlechurch plays the overly loquacious male, interrupting others and himself, while man-splaining, in a funny, if a little annoying, self-satisfied way as he is meant to be. He asks if he spoke too much, followed by a silence during which, finally, someone else can speak. Amber Gray, as an African American woman, overlooked and treated as a token, comes across as the most rational in many ways. There might have been more room for drama to escalate a conflict between her character and a somewhat benighted board, but this is a comedy. Chelsea Yaukra-Kurts is the sincere board member sleeping with a fellow board member, while espousing her own pristine morality. She is believable, likeable and emotional, perfect as someone caught between her belief that she is enlightened and her behavior that leads to some nasty emails from another board member's wife. These people are not only far from enligthened; they are largely empty. Eboni Flowers appears briefly, in a world where demographics help define people, even though they should not. She replaces a reluctantly racist board member, yet we can be confident nothing will make a difference. You cannot fish in such shallow waters as the brains of these board members.

Eureka Day is one of few comedies on Broadway now. And yes, there is a place for comedy on Broadway. This is such a good cast, presenting such a real performance where the humor comes from the humanity of characters, not just comedy. The script and characters are fairly superficial and the politically correct jokes continue, but the people we see do seem so hamstrung by their desire to please. Truman Capote once wrote about, if I have the right word, "real phonies." These are people who are so phony that they are phony to their core. Where their heart should be instead is some trivial teaching that exists instead. They are all Hamlet and no Macbeth – all thinking about things and nothing when it comes to doing.

This is a fun, funny play that ends, it turns out, right before Covid strikes. It’s a truly triumphant Broadway production, not dated, even though it’s about the mumps and ends when Covid arrives. That simply lowers the stakes compared to the vaccine debate about Covid. People who are all about perception in the end are not only superficial, but often the reverse of what they appear. Eureka Day shows us that attention to detail can also mean an absence of depth. Even if many audience members may see a little bit of themselves in those on stage, the relief is that those people truly are well-intentioned. We like them, because they want to do and be good . It’s just that, as we know, good intentions often lead to terrible places. And good souls, hearts and actions matter so much more. It is not the thought that counts, when the gift is good. These characters, at least, seem entirely devoid of heart and soul, but instead preoccupied with the overriding desire to please. And that, maybe, is the true tragedy at the heart of this entertaining comedy that both feels very distant and painfully close to home.