By Coral Gables Gazette staff
At a progressive Berkeley private school where every decision is supposed to emerge from consensus, a mumps outbreak turns enlightened conversation into something far messier — and much funnier.
GableStage closes its 27th season with the South Florida premiere of Eureka Day, Jonathan Spector’s comedy about a progressive private school whose commitment to consensus meets an obstacle it cannot talk its way around. It opens on Friday, May 15.
When consensus stops working
Eureka Day had its world premiere at Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley, California, in 2018, followed by its London debut at The Old Vic and its Broadway premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in late 2024. It won the 2025 Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Drama League Award for Best Revival of a Play.
The play is set entirely within board meetings of the Eureka Day School, a Berkeley institution whose parents and administrators prize inclusion and consensus above all else. When a mumps outbreak forces the board to consider mandating vaccinations — a policy that will inevitably upset some families — the group discovers that its governing philosophy is inadequate for the moment. As cases rise, the characters deepen beyond caricature: what begins as stock satire of earnest progressivism builds toward one of the funniest and most unsettling scenes in recent American theater, as the board opens a virtual town hall and overlapping parent comments — projected onto the set — escalate into something that is simultaneously hilarious and alarming.
Playwright Jonathan Spector, based in Oakland, wrote the play long before the COVID-19 pandemic. “At moments,” he has said, “it feels like stepping into an episode of The Twilight Zone.” The years between the play’s Berkeley premiere and its Broadway run transformed it from a comedy about a recognizable local type into something that lands — as the New York Times and others noted — with considerably more weight than its author originally anticipated.
Critics called it “the perfect play for our age of disagreement” and “not only one of the funniest plays to open this year, but one of the saddest.” The Broadway production drew additional notice for how the play’s vaccine debate had absorbed new resonance in the political environment surrounding its opening.
A cast built for collision
Directing at GableStage for the first time is Stuart Meltzer, Founding Artistic Director of Zoetic Stage, one of South Florida’s most consistently honored companies. Meltzer co-produced and directed numerous Carbonell Award ceremonies and has been nominated for Outstanding Direction across multiple productions. His South Florida fluency — and his first-time presence in the GableStage rehearsal room — is itself a small event in the local theater calendar.
The cast draws heavily from South Florida performers with established GableStage histories. Rita Cole, Jeni Hacker, and Ryan Didato bring prior GableStage productions to their credits, and Mark H. Dold appears here after his turn in Harry Clarke earlier in the same season. Jordyn Moone makes her GableStage debut. New World School of the Arts alumna Sarah Rome Guerra will take the role of Suzanne for performances May 20 through 24.
Producing Artistic Director Bari Newport, who has been trying to stage this play since 2019, notes in the production materials that time has only sharpened its comedy. Given the current national conversation about public health authority, institutional trust, and the difficulty of collective decision-making, that assessment is not difficult to credit.
The debate beyond the stage
GableStage has organized several programs around the run. Pre-show talks with members of the artistic team take place thirty minutes before each performance except opening nights. Post-show discussions follow the first Sunday matinee and all Wednesday matinees. Wine tastings precede each Friday evening performance. On Sunday, June 7, following the 2 p.m. matinee, GableStage and MOSAIC Miami will present a moderated public conversation — “DEI or DIE: Performing Inclusion, Confronting Reality” — featuring voices from education, philanthropy, and law. Students and teachers may attend any performance free of charge by arriving forty-five minutes before curtain with valid identification.
What to know
The production runs May 15 through June 14 at the Wolfson Family Theatre in the historic Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Avenue, Coral Gables. Performances are Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., with matinees on Wednesdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Single tickets begin at $50. Tickets are available at gablestage.org or by calling 305-445-1119. Group rates are available at groups@gablestage.org.
