If you recall COVID-era parent meetings at your (or your kids’) school with horror, you’ll find one fabulous, elongated scene in the play “Eureka Day” as cathartic as it is hilarious.

The Zoom sequence takes place as a hapless little board of a parent-run private school — a liberal, crunchy, Montessori-esque, Northern California kind of place — is trying to debate whether to close the school due to an outbreak of mumps. Some of the kids are vaccinated, some are not. (The play is set just before COVID, but also is a satire of behavior during that crisis.) They also debate whether to change the school admissions policy to ban the unvaccinated.

The board is adept at using progressive jargon like “holding space” and “feeling seen,” and insisting on no disposable flatware, but is hapless when it comes to making an actual difficult decision. The board members lose control of the meeting as parents in the “chat” section start to attack each other in increasingly intemperate and unhinged ways, taking advantage of how chat showcases the qualified and the ignorant alike. The playwright, Jonathan Spector, unspools the messages on a big screen even as you watch the panicked board scrunched around a laptop in horror. It’s a ruthless piece of satire and filled with one hard laugh after another. Frankly, it’s worth going to the show at the Broadway Playhouse just to see it.

“Eureka Day” is a very funny play in general, and this new production downtown from TimeLine Theatre is one of many in the nation this season. I enjoyed the show greatly on Broadway, where it was directed by Chicago’s Anna D. Shapiro in a production that was quite a bit subtler than the one on offer here.

The 100-minute comedy can best be described as a lampooning of virtual signaling, and of the clueless white liberal establishment that learned the words and signals of equity without really changing their behavior. This is not some DEI takedown; Spector knows the political leanings of the theater audience and he targets hypocrisy, not political issues. And of course, the play is set before the current age of Donald J. Trump, now the elephant in all these rooms.

This time around with “Eureka Day,” there is another problem, indicative, I think, of how fast the world changes.

The main conflict here is between those who believe in all vaccines and those with more skeptical approaches. But the anti-vaxxers approach this issue from the left, starting with a belief in holistic healing and a disdain for so-called Big Pharma. This is how it often used to be. Now, we associate vaccine skepticism with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, generally associated with the right. Frankly, that throws this play off quite a bit, as it leads the audience to be more confused about the character of Suzanne (Rebekah Ward), even though the play generally presents her views sympathetically and is critical of everyone else for their self-serving dismissal of them. I think director Lili-Anne Brown’s production ought to have actively countered that issue a bit more than is the case; “Eureka Day” is not supposed to have clear rights and wrongs, but is a takedown of how human selfishness can survive almost anything.

Rebekah Ward, PJ Powers, Gabrielle Lott-Rogers and Aurora Adachi-Winter in “Eureka Day” by TimeLine Theatre at the Broadway Playhouse. (Brett Beiner)

All that said, there are some very strong moments in the very lively first Chicago production of one of the sharpest Broadway plays of recent years, amusingly designed here by Collette Pollard on a set filled with children’s books (everyone prizes literacy, maybe over human compassion).

PJ Powers, playing the well-meaning leader of those who cannot be led, offers a carefully observed performance with farcical interludes. The rest of the ensemble (Aurora Adachi-Winter, Caroline Chu, Jürgen Hooper and the delightfully quizzical Gabrielle Lott-Rogers) show much skill in comic timing although the best moments come not when they lean into the gags and the shtick but into the very human challenges of doing your best for your kids in the most difficult of circumstances. The more recognizable the behavior, the better it works in this show.

“Eureka Day” (that’s the ironic name of the school) really is a deft observation of the perils of all kinds of shared governance and how the veneers of what people say in meetings are thin indeed.  Underneath, it says, we all want what we want and are often willing to go to great lengths not to hear but to be heard ourselves.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

Review: “Eureka Day” (3 stars)

When: Through Feb. 22

Where: Broadway Playhouse, 175 E. Chestnut Place

Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Tickets: $30-$90 at timelinetheatre.com and www.broadwayinchicago.com

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/22/review-eureka-day-chicago/