AfroAmerican playwright Lynn Nottage’s SWEAT is a Pulitzer prize winning play set between 2000 and 2008 in Reading, Pennsylvania. Reading becomes the microcosm of proud working people in small town America, in decline. Sweat is in the tradition of monumental American plays like Osage County, Death of a Salesman, A View from the Bridge and Glass Menagerie where America is losing its soul, its inhabitants are unhappy and the future is foretold to be dire. SWEAT confronts the big issues – racism, capitalism, religion.
The play is set almost entirely in a bar where steel factory workers gather to celebrate birthdays, wage war against the bosses and get drunk. In the opening moment a woman is so drunk that she topples off the bar stool. The characters are nearly broke and they drink heavily to camouflage their problems. The USA has signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Mexicans will work for far less. The pay in Reading is about to be cut in order for the company to survive. The union organises a picket line and then a scab is viciously attached in the bar. ALERT: these are people who cannot speak more than ten words without swearing. It’s f**k, f**k, f**k every second speech so don’t bring the children.
The story begins with separate meetings between a parole officer and two young men recently released from prison. Jason has a black eye and white supremacist tattoos. Chris is an African American who has turned to religion for forgiveness. We discover their crime near the end of the play.
Yes, SWEAT is a powerful play. Yes, it explores world issues through one small community. Yes, it is well produced. But it is overly earnest and stuck in the past. It does not enlighten or entertain us now.
How does British theatre portray the closure of its factories and coal mines? The Full Monty and Brassed Off tell much the same story but with more humour and graciousness than SWEAT The Brits do the same thing but better.
Are the characters true representations of middle American? No. Having been raised near Reading, the characters are not recognisable to me. Perhaps the playwright decided to portray only a small part of the community. Residents of Reading may have gone through a tough time but they did not drink heavily, beat each other up or spend hours shouting in a bar. In the play, a mother dislikes her son, a son won’t talk to his father, a woman rejects her husband and all (but one) ignore the barman – that is, until they want to kill him.
One star of the performance is the set. Designers Jeremy Allen and Verity Hampson have created a totally believable bar. The curved frontage is reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s painting Night Hawk. Subtle projections on this top space add greatly to the overall effect. The shadow from the old dirty American flag is an interesting shape the sets the mood. The mirror on the wall behind the bar reflects the audience. Brendon Boney designed the effective and not-overbearing sound and music. Scott Fisher’s costumes are wonderful – lots of Philadelphia t-shirts. Director Zindzi Okenyo has gathered a star group of eight actors, all excellent – Gabriel Alvarado, Paula Arundell, Yure Covich, James Fraser, Deborah Galanos, Markus Hamilton, Tinashe Mangwana and Lisa McCune.
A Sydney Theatre Company production, Lynn Nottage’s SWEAT is playing the Wharf 1 theatre, Sydney Theatre Company until the 15th December 2024.
Production photography by Prudence Upton
