Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Jonathan Spector’s sad, hilarious EUREKA DAY is a play for our times

• By drediman
• September 9, 2019
• No Comments

Tina Benko, Elizabeth Carter, and Thomas Jay Ryan in Colt Coeur’s production of “Eureka Day” by Jonathan Spector at the Walkerspace Theatre. Photo by Robert Altman.

This weekend at the Walkerspace Theater in Soho, I caught the East Coast premiere of Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day, courtesy of the folks at Off-Broadway outfit Colt Coeur. The rising theater company caught my attention with its pungent production of Stephen Belber’s Joan, starring a magnificent Johanna Day (less successful but eye-catchingly ambitious was the company’s last effort, Zürich). Now we have Eureka Day, which tells the story of a seemingly idealistic Berkley-area charter elementary school. However, an outbreak of mumps tests the school’s utopian community-oriented philosophy as the students’ pro- and anti-mandatory vaccination parents face off.

The play quickly brings to mind The Mad One’s wickedly funny, period-perfect satires Miles for Mary and Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie with its dramaturgical exactitude. However, unlike those two hit productions, Eureka Day – which has been written by Mr. Spector with precision and biting insight – strikes closer to home. You see, the piece works as a sort of microcosm for the larger, deeply frustrating gridlock/partisan culture we’ve unfortunately globally adopted. The play also works as an interesting companion piece to Bess Wohl’s excellent Make Believe (currently running at Second Stage’s Off-Broadway home), which depicts the anxieties of childhood – particularly under traumatic duress – as a parable for the unsettling times we live in. Eureka Day takes the flip side and similarly depicts the intense anxiety of raising a child in our increasingly mad world.

The production has been directed by Colt Coeur artistic director Adrienne Campbell-Holt, who has done a brilliant job of balancing realism (thanks largely to the wonderfully lived-in classroom set by designer John McDermott) and heightened emotion. She’s illicited some rather fine performances from her seasoned cast, many of whom will not be unfamiliar to those well-versed in the Off-Broadway scene (e.g., Tina Benko, Thomas Jay Ryan, KK Moggie). Indeed, their detailed performances bring out the truthfulness, sadness, and hilarity in Mr. Spector’s very timely play.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

EUREKA DAY
Off-Broadway, Play
Colt Coeur / Walkerspace Theater
1 hour, 50 minutes (with one intermission)
Through September 21