Eureka Day at the Old Vic: a ‘sharp’ and ‘fiercely accurate’ comedy

Written in 2018, Jonathan Spector’s play is set in the familiar territory of the culture wars, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. In a primary school in California, a group of progressive parents have gathered to discuss an outbreak of mumps – driving the plot towards a clash over the MMR jab.

The committee is led by Don (Mark McKinney), an “irritant” who is less a “virtue signaller than a human semaphore”, but the real power in the group resides with Suzanne (the US screen star Helen Hunt), who “talks fuzzily about community and consensus” while actually being deeply controlling – and who ends up at loggerheads with Carina (Susan Kelechi Watson), the first black woman on the committee.

The evening starts with a volley of well-polished satirical potshots aimed at the liberal Left, via these rather “flatly drawn” entitled parents, but this onslaught then gives way to “earnest debates on social justice, vaccination and the pull of conspiracy theory”.

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This is a “sharp comedy” – and a “bracing corrective to the idea that you can only discuss serious issues with a straight face”, said Sarah Crompton on What’s on Stage. The satire is “broad but perfectly calibrated; the writing fiercely accurate”.

One central scene is particularly well staged by director Katy Rudd. To defuse the brewing crisis, the board members decide to conduct a “Community Activated Conversation” over Zoom, while comments from (unseen) parents unfurl on the set above their heads. Inevitably, it collapses into a melee – with profanities and accusations of fascism – and in the theatre, the audience is reduced to “helpless laughter”.

The show is a palpable hit, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph – and the Old Vic’s decision to stage it is a welcome sign that British theatre is “awake to the ludicrous – and also pernicious – side of woke”. Yet the dramatic stakes for those involved are insufficient to deliver the necessary heft.

It’s a funny and perceptive play, but not a “daring” one, agreed Andrzej Lukowski on Time Out. It’s “enjoyable”, but “slightly frustrating”.

The Old Vic, London SE1. Until 31 October