Eureka Day

Diverse board members of “Eureka Day,” a private school devoted to and welcoming of cultural and racial diversity, meet to face a  challenge: What will they do as an outbreak of mumps affects the school and their children?  Board chairman Don, the eldest, as an experienced professor and administrator, asks them to consider if the school might require vaccinations. Diversity explodes into division.

Each person takes a separate stance, based on what turn out to be true personal beliefs. Eli (Chris Amos, reflecting well a divided personality) is adamant about everything, making decisions seemingly for the sake of doing so.  Eli presents himself as a good father of family but is carrying out an affair with board member Meiko (Celia Mei Rubin, playing bland and sneaky, seemingly torn between guilt about and wanting Eli full time).

Suzanne (effective Anne Bowles, who goes from mild mannered, cherishing books given to the school library, to a blond bombshell) insists that everyone be included in decisions as well as final actions. Carina (Jasmine Bracey, impressive insisting on truth being told and heard) is the black person who always reminds the board members they are supposed to be problem solving in the light of what’s good for the community.

Don, who lacks the commanding way needed with a group like Eureka Day School’s board, gets criticized by all sides of and in the debate. (Paul Slade Smith’s Don does, though, merit praise for persistence in trying to reach a decision or possibly come up with a solution via media.) He goes along with a supposedly workable handling of the vaccination situation—submission to “A Community Activated Conversation” by online chat among  parents of the students.  

The online parents’ chat is where the real comic part of Jonathan Spector’s play comes in.  It’s broadcast at Asolo by a screen behind the meeting members (here so small that it’s not readily visible to the farthest house audience) but mainly readable in an elaborate production design on opposite side walls behind groups of onstage spectators.

The comments begin with innocuous remarks about the viewers themselves, the  board members, and the general topic. 

The remarks bring a fight among proponents of vaccination and those against it and requirements that will remind audiences of things they’ve read and heard during the present pandemic. How funny they are may depend on a reader’s point of view. A problem with the production is that, like Don, an audience finds it hard to pay attention to the projected on-line remarks and simultaneously those by the board members in the school’s Open Room. That challenge certainly also is the only one in the play that very able Director Bianca Laverne Jones didn’t meet.

Costumes, the set and all scenic elements (like chairs and lounges) are as primary-colorful as can be and appropriate to Eureka Day’s Open Room.  Sound is better for scene-setting than, a few times, for hearing all that’s said. 

As for the show as a whole, I feel Asolo did all possible for what the author gave them to work with and the director chose as a production scheme. The excellent acting was helpful.