There are many Eureka moments in Jonathan Spector’s EUREKA DAY and this production by Outhouse Theatre Co. under the direction of Craig Baldwin finds them.
There are Eureka moments of empathy, there are Eureka moments of pathos, there are Eureka moments of conflict and there Eureka moments of comedy gold. EUREKA DAY is a highly entertaining synthesis of theatre being a branch of sociology as ethics, politics, economics become inseparable.
It’s 2018 and Eureka Day, a private primary school in Berkeley, California, is a bastion of progressive ideals: representation, gender identity, social justice. It prides itself on experience-based techniques for problem-solving, learning, and discovery.
The parents on the Executive Committee value inclusion above all else until a mumps outbreak forces a rethink of the school’s liberal vaccine policy. As cases rise and polite debate descends into ideological warfare, the school leadership are forced to confront one of our era’s defining questions: How do you build consensus, when no one can agree on the facts?
By adopting a “heard” mentality, there is a belief in the executive committee that it will create a herd mentality, a concrete consensus. Herding that proves harder to muster despite dealing with a flock of well-meaning woke folk.
What essentially is a series of committee meetings, EUREKA DAY holds interest for a hundred minutes or so by well crafted and considered argument presenting the umbilical connection between what happens on the stage and what is happening in the world.
A quintet of characters explore and explode in the confines of civil discussion where the venerable become vulnerable and schism threatens to rent reason.
Jamie Oxenbould as Don, convivial convener, brings the flummoxed and flustered to fine effect, with clockwork comic timing.
Katrina Retallick as Suzanne, harbouring unconscious bias and a prejudice against immunisation born from a personal tragedy is riveting; the idea of forced vaccination fits like a glass slipper on an ugly sister’s foot.
Christian Charisiou brings dynamic crunch to the ebullient progressive, Eli, who is having an illicit fling with fellow committee member, May, enchantingly played by Deborah An.
Branden Christine as new committee member Carina brings a determined and disciplined calm to this catalyst character.
Set and costume design by Kate Beere is first rate, a colourful cosy snug depicting a primary school library festooned with flyers and subliminal teaching aids and Aron Murray’s brilliant lighting and video design plays an integral and hilarious part of the staging, brilliantly illustrating the off the cuff unkindness proliferated on the internet.
