Eureka Day - Old Vic

[drmaplewood]

Unfortunately I found the whole thing tedious and the short running time felt longer. As Dave mentioned above, most scenes went on for far too long (the Zoom call should have been 30 seconds tops and goes on forever) and yes, the OTT laughter from the audience meant that a lot of this was inaudible anyway. Helen was very good, though.

[Steve]

I'm my opinion, the zoom call is a triumph of form working together with substance.

We all know from social media that the most hostile partisan voices drown out anybody trying to mediate, and this scene reflects that perfectly.

The scene is arranged so that the hostile partisan messages behind the actors draw your attention away from the actors. Because they are more hostile, and because those messages are so obviously heading for conflict, the actors trying to talk sense in front of those messages cannot hold our attention.

The way this mirrors real life (familiar hostile insults, familiar hapless moderators, the inevitability and futility of it all) is what is so funny. We are forced to recognise our own addiction to drama over common sense, when the show demonstrates how instinctive it is to preference the former over the latter.

I particularly loved the running thumb-up emoji joke, which times it's payoff perfectly.

[wiggymess]

Sept 8, 2022 12:11:15 GMT Steve said:

I'm my opinion, the zoom call is a triumph of form working together with substance.

We all know from social media that the most hostile partisan voices drown out anybody trying to mediate, and this scene reflects that perfectly.

The scene is arranged so that the hostile partisan messages behind the actors draw your attention away from the actors. Because they are more hostile, and because those messages are so obviously heading for conflict, the actors trying to talk sense in front of those messages cannot hold our attention.

The way this mirrors real life (familiar hostile insults, familiar hapless moderators, the inevitability and futility of it all) is what is so funny. We are forced to recognise our own addiction to drama over common sense, when the show demonstrates how instinctive it is to preference the former over the latter.

I particularly loved the running thumb-up emoji joke, which times it's payoff perfectly.

Interesting about the emoji, as I thought it was really overused and somewhat lost its power as a joke as a result. Think for me it summed up that scene as something that worked at first, then dragged, and ultimately outstayed its welcome a bit. The audience absolutely loved it though.

[partytentdown]

I saw it last night too, it took me a while to get into (I thought it was heading rapidly for 'posh audience laughs at typical 'woke' people on stage' territory but then I really liked it). And I think the zoom effect was deliberate, I don't think it really mattered that we couldn't hear the cast over the laughter, that was sort of the point, the craziness on the screen was supposed to drown out any sort of sensible discussion on stage (which was also descending into chaos anyway).

I did think the ending was a little tagged on but I think it was the only ending that could happen.

[mkb]

I wondered if there was some symbolic meaning in the name of the private school, Eureka Day, whose Executive Committee we find ourselves watching. I couldn't see any. It's a meaningless name that no doubt someone on the committee thought aspirational and of value, but isn't.

It's a perfect metaphor for these virtue-signalling members who exercise pained mental gymnastics to be inclusive of all points of view, no matter how absurd or logic-defying, until harsh reality intervenes when unvaccinated pupils get sick.

While the humour in Act 1 is undeniably funny, it was tempered by the psychological triggers it activated in me. I've have had to deal with science-denying cretins like these and it was painful to re-live it. I know I shouldn't say "cretins", but hey I'm human.

There are some great performances here, especially from Susan Kelechi Watson as the outsider, and Helen Hunt as the anti-vaxxer blinded by confirmation bias.

The production teeters precariously between a three-star and four, but I was won round by playwright Jonathan Spector coming to a strong and satisfying conclusion in Act 2.

Four stars.

(One minute's silence at 19:35 for death of monarch)
Act 1: 19:39-20:22
Act 2: 20:45-21:39

[jm25]

Watched this tonight and whilst I didn't think that there was a huge amount of substance to it, I did enjoy it. At the end of the play I didn't really feel like I'd been on any kind of journey with these characters, but it was funny and the Zoom scene was probably my highlight. As partytentdown says, the point of it very much seemed to be to drown out the actual substantive conversation that was trying to take place.

The evening will probably be more memorable for me for the minute's silence that was held at the start. It'll be part of my 'Where were you?' answer when that question inevitably gets asked about today's news in future years. I'd read the news on the Tube on my way there but I heard a few gasps when it was announced that the Queen had died. I also think I broke the news to the doormen when I asked if the performance was still going on!

[jamb0r]

I think we may have been sat next to each other last night jm25! Centre of the second row? The minute silence was definitely very moving.

Overall I enjoyed this but not as much as I was hoping to. I really enjoyed the performances, and much preferred the second act to the first. Not sure if I just wasn't maybe in the right frame of mind last night, but I HATED the Zoom scene. I found it a bit overwhelming and the 'joke' wore very thin very quickly for me. The audience were going NUTS over it - I haven't heard an audience shriek like that in a long time! So maybe it was just me.

[mkb]

Sept 8, 2022 22:17:33 GMT mkb said:

I wondered if there was some symbolic meaning in the name of the private school, Eureka Day...

To add...

I see there are at least nine US States with towns called Eureka, so there is probably no more significance to the playwright's choice of title than that it sets the play in some homogeneous, middle-America municipality.

Then again, I learn from the programme that the setting is Berkeley, California. There were references to that place in the dialogue but it wasn't obvious to me that they were talking about their current location. So, I'm back to wondering why this day school would be called "Eureka Day".

[jm25]

Sept 9, 2022 8:39:48 GMT jamb0r said:

I think we may have been sat next to each other last night jm25! Centre of the second row? The minute silence was definitely very moving.

Overall I enjoyed this but not as much as I was hoping to. I really enjoyed the performances, and much preferred the second act to the first. Not sure if I just wasn't maybe in the right frame of mind last night, but I HATED the Zoom scene. I found it a bit overwhelming and the 'joke' wore very thin very quickly for me. The audience were going NUTS over it - I haven't heard an audience shriek like that in a long time! So maybe it was just me.

I was! Though I could have sworn they were front row when I booked… ‘

I know what you mean about not being sure about being in the right frame of mind going in. I was a bit apprehensive at first that I would be too distracted to enjoy I needn’t have worried! The Zoom scene’s still my highlight but I do think it could have been cut by a couple of minutes and wouldn’t have been any poorer for it. The emoji gag worked for me because my mum is literally exactly like that 😂

[theatrelover123]

Generally enjoyed it. Took a while to settle but it lifted at the Zoom scene which was very well done. My feeling is that you weren't meant to know or focus on what the people on stage were saying and that it was likely improvved or workshopped, rather than fully scripted - but I could be wrong. I really hope they didn't set the scene thinking there would be silence/no laughter as that would be crazy.
I drifted off a fair bit in the second half as I found it less engaging and overall struggled to really care about any of the characters or the arguments, mainly as they were thinly sketched as characters and I couldn't really tell you much about any of them.
Nice to see her on stage but not sure it needed Helen Hunt (who to my mind played her role on fairly one level with little variation)
Not a big success, not a complete failure. Just a slight feeling of meh at the end and a hope that they could have balanced the acts more evenly and ending more strongly.
3 out of 5 for me.

[Steve]

Sept 8, 2022 14:42:43 GMT partytentdown said:

I saw it last night too, it took me a while to get into (I thought it was heading rapidly for 'posh audience laughs at typical 'woke' people on stage' territory but then I really liked it).

I suspect the focus on "woke" people is because the author is actually trying to speak to anti-woke right wing people. In the US, you tend to get more anti-factual, science-denying, conspiracy-oriented thinking on the right (eg the elections were stolen, Hillary Clinton runs a paedophile ring, climate change is a hoax, vaccines are a deep state plot, etc, etc), but if you say it out loud, the folks who think things like this would get defensive. By focusing on the natural enemies of the right, the "woke," the author may succeed in getting anti-factual right-wing types to actually listen to his argument.

Over here, we long ago discredited Andrew Wakefield and his anti-MMR jab stuff, by striking him off (whereupon, predictably, he decamped to the US), and we have some semblance of independent news sources which have a degree of trust, so the right here aren't quite as prone to conspiratorial thinking as over there, although we do have Michael Gove, who has had enough of experts lol.

Sept 9, 2022 9:34:53 GMT mkb said:

Sept 8, 2022 22:17:33 GMT mkb said:

I wondered if there was some symbolic meaning in the name of the private school, Eureka Day...

To add...

I see there are at least nine US States with towns called Eureka, so there is probably no more significance to the playwright's choice of title than that it sets the play in some homogeneous, middle-America municipality.

Then again, I learn from the programme that the setting is Berkeley, California. There were references to that place in the dialogue but it wasn't obvious to me that they were talking about their current location. So, I'm back to wondering why this day school would be called "Eureka Day".

I suspect it might be called "Eureka" day, because the author longs for the "Eureka" scientific moment, when people start to believe in science and experts again lol.

[mrbarnaby]

The school in the play is called Eureka isn’t it?

[Steve]

Sept 10, 2022 21:57:18 GMT mrbarnaby said:

The school in the play is called Eureka isn’t it?

Yes. I think we've all just been wondering why lol

[Steve]

The PWC scheme (being so affordable) lured me into seeing this a second time tonight, with Pippa Winslow playing the key character of Suzanne, this time, instead of Helen Hunt.

The play still works magnificently, the zoom scene is still masterful, and the ensemble is still universally wonderful.

The difference between Helen Hunt's Suzanne and Pippa Winslow's Suzanne is that Pippa Winslow plays the character on the surface, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) Suzanne, who is dominating and controlling and forthright and nervy. With this interpretation, you will more easily predict what is going to happen in the plot, so there is less mystery and humour, and more slow-building conflict.

Hunt, by contrast, gave a more layered performance. On the surface, she was more apparently amenable, like Mark McKinney's loveable, people-pleasing, fence-sitting Don, though there was always a suspicion of the stridency of Winslow's Suzanne beneath the surface, hinted at by micro-expressions. With Hunt, you never quite knew what she was thinking, how she would react, and she constantly had me off balance and wondering if and when she'd show her full colours.

Both approaches work, with Winslow's straightforward take bolstering the conflict, and Hunt's layered approach bolstering the unpredictability, humour and mystery of the play.

On another note, I love the character development in Ben Schnetzer's Eli, who bumbles amusingly in the first half, and deepens movingly in the second half.

I also love how much displaced passion Kirsten Foster manages to stuff into her character, May's knitting lol.

If this play has a weakness, it's that it resolves things that in the real world are much more difficult to resolve. But if dear old Billington were still writing reviews, this might be a plus for him, as he couldn't say of this play, as he did if so many, that it asks questions that it never tries to answer.

All in all, I love this play and this cast, even if it is a bit more pat in its resolution than it could have been.

And, oh how wonderful is Susan Kelechi Watson's acting that she says so much by doing so little. Really one of the great economical performances!

Still 4 and a half stars from me.

[foxa]

I saw this last night - Row P of the stalls with a £10 ticket how could I not? I only noticed after I booked that it was a performance that Helen Hunt wouldn't be there, but Pippa Winslow felt very settled in and strong - really pretty remarkable in that I assume she had relatively little rehearsal and some of the overlapping/interrupted lines are complicated.

We laughed so much in the first half - I think I may need to buy the playscript as it meant we missed a few lines, particularly during the Zoom scene. It's very tightly directed.

Loved Susan Kelechi Watson's performance (as Steve says)- her contained physicality (trying to unobtrusively leave a room, dealing with being spoken over...) is a thing of wonder. Big fan of Mark McKenney from his Superstore performances so fun to see him in person. Really well cast - what an excellent ensemble.

Definite recommend from me.

[theoracle]

I was one of the first in for PwC Previews and got central row L in the stalls. I knew practically nothing about the show going in and was expecting Helen Hunt to take on a leading lady role but instead, I was very surprised to see that this was very much an ensemble piece. After the last few years that we've had, I thought this was a very brave decision on Hunt's part to play the role of a woman blinded by her own prejudices towards vaccines/pharmaceuticals. The ending of Act 1 had most of the audience in stitches and my friend who rarely goes to the theatre was raving about the show after which was great to see. I really liked the set too and hope we see more Jonathan Spector going forwards

[Mark]

Thought this was very good, particularly the closing scene of act one in which I had tears of laughter running down my face. Genuine hilarity. Act two slows and is more thought provoking. A speedy two hours of great theatre.

I’m amazed this was written before the 2020 Pandemic, I do wonder if anything has been changed since the off-Broadway production because some reactions and thoughts were so 2020, either that or it’s just a very timely play.

[alessia]

I really enjoyed this last night. Good fun like others have said, the first half hilarious especially the zoom meeting chat. I don't think it dragged at all. I have recommended the play to my colleague who is a parent of primary school children- she'd relate so much. I think the laughing audience covering up the actors voices was expected and planned as part of the play so I was never concerned I'd missed dialogue, although the chat was so fast it was hard to pick up on all the messages.
My favourite was Susan Kelechi Watson (the main reason I booked for this), other have nailed the nail on the head that she can raise an eyebrow or give a certain look and it conveys so much, without saying a word. Also the most relatable character for me.
Second half more serious but still very good, and I felt that the length was spot on- after a tiring day at work I never felt bored or that it was dragging.

[theatrefan77]

I enjoyed this very much. Like most people here I found the Zoom meeting scene particularly hilarious. Overall a great night at the theatre

[foxa]

I'm glad to read these positive responses and like alessia says it didn't drag at all (great praise for me - I tend to think everything is 20 minutes too long.) I've recommended the play widely, but then read a couple of lukewarm reviews, so began to worry that it was just me - so glad it wasn't. Watson is an AMAZING actor - I thought she was just perfect in this.

[alessia]

Sept 28, 2022 14:06:48 GMT foxa said:

I'm glad to read these positive responses and like alessia says it didn't drag at all (great praise for me - I tend to think everything is 20 minutes too long.) I've recommended the play widely, but then read a couple of lukewarm reviews, so began to worry that it was just me - so glad it wasn't. Watson is an AMAZING actor - I thought she was just perfect in this.

Same Re the reviews, I am glad I still went to see it and made my own mind up- more so because I booked before reviews came out, and was not looking forward to it much. Glad to have been pleasantly surprised! 

[greenswan]

Adding another positive note - I can sort of see where the reviews are coming from in terms of lack of 'weightiness' but I have not laughed so hard in a long time. The first half is very much of the moment and escalates delightfully. And like others have mentioned upthread, the second half is very different with incredibly strong acting. Perhaps slightly too long.

[david]

Now that was a great night at the theatre. The ZOOM meeting scene was just brilliant and worth the ticket money just for that scene. That scene aside, the play provided a nice balance of comedy and the more serious tone in Act 2 to make it a worthwhile trip to the OV and the 2hrs just flew by.

With respect to the casting, whilst I enjoyed Helen Hunt’s performance, for me it was Susan Kelechi Watson and Mark McKinney that were the standouts for me. Watson’s scene with Hunt in Act 2 as they argue really was another standout moment and a really powerful scene to watch.

I definitely missed a lot of the lines during the ZOOM meeting scene from laughing so much that I ended up buying the play text at the interval to reread that particular scene.

[orchidman]

Worth seeing if you can bear more talk of vaccines and herd immunity although nowhere near as incisive as Admissions by Joshua Harmon which is a similar US comedy/drama. But this is a well made play which is good to see.

Thankless role for Helen Hunt.

[barelyathletic]

I really enjoyed this last night. I normally have a real thing about the OV and its seat pricing but, I have to say, of my two restricted view seats at the back of the circle one had a clear view and the other you only had to lean slightly to look round the pillar. I didn't miss anything. A bargain for £20 each.

I thought it was hilarious, especially the conference call scene, though I felt for the actual actors in that they literally just became background noise at this point. I'm sure we are supposed to engage a little with what they are saying, but I laughed like a drain at the visuals. I thought it was an interesting issue play. Fascinating in that it was written before the pandemic and pressing so many more buttons now.

I went in knowing a little about it and I did think I'd be a bit uncomfortable with it as an attack on wokeism when it started (I believe being woke is being aware). But I felt it was more about the dangers of extremism. And I thought the message that to understand someone's point of view you have to know where they are coming from was strongly put across. Though interesting that this still didn't resolve opposing beliefs and disagreements. I thought the cast were all very strong and it was fascinating to see an Oscar-winning actress not take a starry role but really work as part of an ensemble.

It reminded me of Clybourne Park (though it's not, I think, as good as that play) and made for a very entertaining and provocative night of theatre. Great to see the Old Vic packed to the gills as well. Four stars from me.