Vaccination advocates and their opponents find themselves at each other’s throats to hysterically funny and deadly accurate effect in Jonathan Spector’s Tony-winning comedy Eureka Day, Pasadena Playhouse’s Broadway-caliber 2025-2026 season opener.

The Eureka Day in question is quite possibly the “wokest” private elementary school in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is either good or bad depending on how you feel about all things “woke.”

For example, how many schools do you know of that would consider adding the term “Transracial Adoptee” on the pull-down menu for families applying for admission to make sure that no prospective parents or their offspring should feel left out?

Not that everyone on the 5-member Executive Committee is on the same page about this and other issues up for discussion at the first meeting of the 2018-2019 school year, but because decisions are only made by consensus, compromise is, in theory at least, the name of the game, no matter how much overtime this entails.

Still, a discussion of drop-down menus pales in comparison to the emergency session that’s held after the daughter of one of the members comes down with mumps and the City of Berkeley Public Health Division insists the school send out an email informing parents that pupils who “can’t provide documentation of immunity to Mumps will be excluded from school until it is determined by the County Health Officer that there is no longer a risk of exposure,” and the discussion that ensues soon has tempers flaring with no sign of consensus in sight.

That, however, is nothing compared to a Zoom conference with parents that quickly descends into so much dissemination of misinformation, hurling of insults, not to mention a series of thumbs-up emojis from an enthusiastic Leslie Kaufman that never have five actors memorized so many lines for virtually no purpose whatsoever other than to give a playwright a chance to show off just one of his strokes of genius as sustained audience laughter drowns out their words.

And speaking of strokes of genius, there’s an eleventh-hour lights-up that is another one as well, and so is a doozy of a closing line made possible by the pandemic.

 Though I’m guessing pro-vaxxers will find more to their liking in Eureka Day than those on the other side of the fence, the characters Spector has created are so authentic that there’s nothing even the most ill-informed among them would say that you haven’t heard or read before.

All of this gives director Teddy Bergman and five fabulous actors the chance to dazzle, and none more than cast standout Mia Barron who gets to deliver a gut-puncher of a monolog that so humanizes Suzanne (who probably learned her science from Jenny McCarthy and most certainly let her preconceived notions lead to a profoundly embarrassing faux pas), it makes pretty much everything Suzanne believes make sense.

And Barron isn’t the only one in the cast who delivers the goods.

Rick Holmes, whose Don is so new-agey, he quotes Rumi at the drop of a hat; Nate Corddry, whose Eli is as well-intentioned as he his clueless; Camille Chen, whose Meiko does more with silence and a glare as than most actors can do with twice as many lines; and Cherise Boothe, whose Carina is possibly the sole voice of reason in the group (but that may be because she’s new to the whole private school experience) are all four sensational.

Scenic Designer Wilson Chin’s meticulously appointed school library set signals from the get-go what matters at Eureka Day, Social Justice books taking up as much space as Fiction, and Denitsa Bliznakova’s costumes tell us much about the parents sporting them even before they speak.

 Add to this Elizabeth Harper’s expert lighting, sound designer John Nobori’s engaging musical underscoring, and David Bengali’s rapid-fire flame war projections are top-of-the-line too.

Casting (including that of Kailyn Leilani, whose Winter makes an impression without saying a word) is by Ryan Bernard Tymensky, CSA.

David S. Franklin is stage manager and Lisa Toudic is assistant stage manager. Brad Enlow is technical director and production supervisor. Jenny Slattery is associate producer. Davidson & Choy Publicity are press representatives.

If Eureka Day was already timely when written and even more so on Broadway last year, it is timeliest of all right smack-dab now. That it finds abundant humor in what feels less and less funny as each new day passes is more than enough reason to cheer its Pasadena Playhouse debut.

Pasadena Playhouse, 39 South El Molino Ave., Pasadena.
www.pasadenaplayhouse.org

–Steven Stanley
September 14, 2025
Photos: Jeff Lorch

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Tags: Jonathan Spector, Los Angeles Theater Review, Pasadena Playhouse