Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day is a play with deep Bay Area roots. Originally commissioned by Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre and first performed in 2018, it won the 2019 San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Original Script and Theatre Bay Area’s Will Glickman Award for best new play to premiere in the Bay Area.
It had its North Bay premiere at Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Theatre Company in 2019 and runs off-Broadway and at London’s Old Vic. The 2024 Broadway revival picked up the Best Revival Tony Award just a couple of months ago. Currently, there’s a remount of the original production (with the original director and several members of the original cast) running in Mill Valley at Marin Theatre.
Sonoma County residents need not jump on the 101 to check out a production of this very interesting play, as Healdsburg’s Raven Players have a production currently running at the Raven Performing Arts Theater through Sept. 21.
Eureka Day is the kind of school run by committee where everything must be approved by consensus. Situated in Berkeley (of course), the Executive Board consists of school leader Don (Matt Farrell) and five parent volunteers: longtime members Eli (Jason Justin), Meiko (Nicole Thordsen), Suzanne (Chelsea Bell Jennings) and newcomer Carina (Jeanette Seisdedos). They spend their meetings deciding things like whether “transracial adoptee” should be added to the drop-down menu of identifying choices on their on-line application form or whether paper plates should be allowed on campus.
Consensus building becomes a challenge when they are notified that an enrolled student has contracted the mumps and that the County Health Department is going to prohibit any students without documentation of immunity from returning to school.
Cue the vaccination debate.
And yet, the issues Spector confronts are more than just that one hot-button issue. Is the search for “common ground” often a futile one? Should “feelings” trump science, and whose science? Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?
Spector offers all the viewpoints, with the parents taking opposing sides and the school administrator trying to find an impossible middle ground. His mediating skills are put to a real test during an online “Community Activated Conversation.” This take on group chats may be the single-best comedic scene written for the stage in the last 10 years.
Director Steven David Martin has cast a few Raven regulars with some new-to-the-area talent, and they make for a solid ensemble. While the cast seemed a bit tentative at moments on opening night, they settled in as the show progressed and will hopefully continue to do so throughout the run.
Farrell is in his element as the harried administrator, and Seisdedos scores as the new-to-the-Board-but-not-to-the-rodeo Carina. Bell Jennings is very strong as the forceful Suzanne, giving voice to the anti-vax point of view, inviting the audience to better understand—but not excuse—the stance. Justin and Thordsen’s characters are a bit underwritten, but each have their moments.
The audience is placed on stage for this production, with elevated rows of seats surrounding the Dan Seisdedos-designed set on three sides. While I’m usually a fan of this approach at The Raven, I think this show requires a bit of distance between audience and stage, particularly during the group-chat scene.
Plays don’t get as timely as Eureka Day. Yet with the uproar at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the state of Florida seeking to repeal all vaccination mandates for school children, it may not play as funny as it originally did.
But life in these United States isn’t as fun as it once was, either.‘Eureka Day’ runs through Sept. 21 at the Raven Performing Arts Theater, 115 North St., Healdsburg. Thu–Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $10–$25. 707.433.6335. raventheater.org
