EUREKA DAY
★★★★ The Old Vic until October 31 oldvictheatre.com
This riotously funny skewering of extreme liberal values and self-satisfied pomposity centres on two tremendous performances from Helen Hunt and fellow American TV and theatre star Susan Kelechi Watson.
Eureka Day is a proudly progressive private California junior school where they use gender-neutral pronouns for their students and congratulate themselves because the kids “cheer the other team when they score”.
Jonathan Spector’s lightweight satire spans a succession of school board meetings set in a colourful classroom where the cheery childish setting belies the rising tensions.
Hunt’s character Suzanne commands every scene, insistently welcoming all opinions while overpoweringly womansplaining her own, ultimately as guilty of prejudiced assumptions as the rest of us. She’s pitted against Watson’s new parent Carina – bewildered then frustrated by the endless woke waffle.
Written pre-pandemic in 2018 and phenomenally prescient, an outbreak of mumps exposes the cracks in valuing
every opinion as the parents and board split over allowing unvaccinated children into school.
Act One sensationally ends with a virtual town hall Zoom meeting as the school closes for quarantine. The cast burble away on stage, drowned out by our laughter at increasingly hilarious and offensive messages between opposing factions of parents scrolling up the back wall. It’s staggeringly well done.
Act Two loses momentum but gains depth as Suzanne and Carina face off, with the former’s heartbreaking anti-vax origins revealed. Meanwhile, the school can’t take the hit of parents withdrawing fees because it’s blown the budget on gender-neutral bathrooms.
It’s all a tad manipulative but gives refreshing respect to both sides, while superb performances from the fivestrong cast and a sharp script leave you with plenty to laugh and think about.
DON’T MISS: The National Theatre’s rollicking Second World War farce Jack Absolute Flies Again with a sublimely silly Caroline Quentin hits cinemas from October 6. Chekhov’s The Seagull, with Emilia Clarke and a mesmerising Indira Varma, follows on November 3. Find out more at ntlive.com.