Bill Irwin, Thomas Middleditch, Amber Gray, Jessica Hecht and Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz in Eureka Day Jeremy Daniel

Manhattan Theatre Club’s new dramedy takes place in the Eureka Day elementary school library, located in Berkeley, California and attended by the spawn of well-to-do liberals. Colors are bright, chairs cheerfully plastic and neat signs demarcate shelves dedicated to “social justice” and “fiction.” The longer you stare at Todd Rosenthal’s vibrant set, though, the more you suspect a visual pun’s afoot. What fills the eye? Countless spines of books. What is Eureka Day’s subject? Spines. Those that wobble with the winds of “wokeness” and those inflexibly fixed on personal certainty. Bending over backward, performatively bowing, or stiffening, many a lumbar will be stress tested here. Jonathan Spector’s play, about vaccine politics splintering a school board, is one big Learning Moment that pretty much everyone fails.

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