Miki Jo (0:00)

Earlier this year I traveled to New York, saw a whole bunch of Broadway shows and among them two of the best plays I think I have ever seen and I'm about to tell you all about them. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening on podcast platforms. My name is Miki Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre and today we are going to be reviewing two of the plays I saw on Broadway back in January. Sadly, both now have concluded their limited runs, but we are talking about Eureka Day and English. Thank goodness I held up the correct playbill in the correct order there. Now Eureka Day was a new production of an existing play. I saw it towards the end of its run in late January at the Friedman Theatre. It was presented by the Manhattan Theatre Club and English was a transfer of an Off Broadway production to the Todd Haymes Theatre operated by the Roundabout Theatre Company. Today I'm going to be letting you know what I thought about each of these, giving you a little bit of an overview, talking about the performances, talking about why they were both so so brilliant and why I am hopefully anticipating seeing a lot of love for both of these in a few months time when it comes to the TO Awards, the annual celebration of the best of the Broadway season. But as always, I am just as intrigued to hear what you thought about them. If you have seen either Eureka Day or English on Broadway, let us know what you thought about them in the comments section down below. And this is not exclusive to Americans or people who have seen productions on Broadway because both of these plays have also been produced elsewhere. English was produced at the Royal Shakespeare Company and subsequently at the kiln Theatre in 2024 here in the UK. And Eureka Day has also been produced in the last few years at the Old Fick Theatre. So if you've seen not just these specific productions, but any iteration of these two plays, let us know what you thought. And if you enjoy my reviews and you want to hear more about my thoughts about different theatre productions, make sure you are following me on podcast platforms if that's where you are hearing this, or subscribed right here on YouTube with the notifications turned on so you don't miss any of my upcoming reviews or other theater themed videos. In the meantime though, let's dive right into it. Let's talk first about Eureka Day and this play takes place at a very progressive West Coast Californian private school named Eureka Day, where we meet this sort of advisory board, the executive board, I think they are called a sort of focus group that exists at the heart of that particular school's interpretation of the pta, the Parent Teacher Association. It is comprised of the school's principal as well as parents of existing students, one of whom has had children in attendance at Eureka Day for a very long time and has become a real staple of the school's community. And of that particular board, another of whom is completely new to the school and newly arrives as the only black board member. The other two board members, we come to find out, are having an affair. We quickly understand that everything that is happening here exists within a language of ultra woke liberalism. I'm using woke in the pejorative sense, which I just hate because it's so divorced from the original important meaning of the word within black culture. But it's very much the overcorrecting, self policing response to a whole host of social issues that the play is spoofing and lightly poking fun at. Which isn't to say that this is in any way anti woke or in any way right leaning. That's not what's happening here. I would describe it as an entirely reasonable comic interpretation of the knots that reasonable people tie themselves up in. And that's how it begins, at least because they are spending an extraordinary amount of time discussing what seems to be a very trivial element of their application process and one particular self identifying term within a drop down menu. The school has a very strong social justice program. The whole thing takes place in the library where we can see evidence of this. We can see the social justice section within the library. And if it feels as though this group of five slightly tense personalities are investing too much effort and passion into what isn't actually that important an issue that is all set to change when one child contracts mumps, a diagnosis which prompts an outbreak among other students, which prompts a response which prompts a conversation. A conversation which quickly becomes contentious. It materializes that among them, even though they hadn't all considered this, there are very different opinions when it comes to vaccinations and the idea of a mandated vaccination policy for the school. This division is echoed throughout the rest of the parents who we do not meet personally, but we encounter in one of the play's more memorable and winning moments, I am gleefully excited to tell you about this particular scene. This comes after the school has been forced to lock down and to separate the students in order to slow the spread of mumps. And it is the decision of Don, the very self sacrificingly magnanimous principal played by Bill Irwin, who is, you know, eager to uplift everyone's voices and consistently remind everyone that he is entirely open to the possibility that everything he's saying might be incorrect. It is his decision that they should have a virtual town hall, which goes about as well as you're expecting it to, represented on stage by the five members of this executive board collected around a laptop, trying to chair a conversation while we see the comments playing out, projected above them onto the playing space, which begin with a sort of a familiarity of awkwardness with some parents struggling to engage with the format and just sending repeated emojis with others a little bit contentious from the off. The whole thing, as you might, might expect, quickly descends into complete mania. It devolves into really strong animosity between these different parents. It devolves, as these things always seem to, into comparisons with fascism and the Nazi party. The greatest punchline here being the moment that one particular parent, who has been sending the same consistent emoji over and over again, the implication being that she doesn't know how she's doing it, or, of course, how to do anything else, suddenly pivots to a shocked face emoji. It's hysterically funn. And it's such a bold choice because on the face of it, it seems wild that we should obstruct the actual dialogue of the play. The only thing that we are hearing with so much raucous laughter. And as soon as we start guffawing at the chaos of it all and their frenzied reaction in trying to retain control of this spiraling meeting, we definitely can't hear anything that they're saying. They also do a fantastic job, I think, in contrasting all of the conversations that we do see playing prior to that and subsequently on stage. Because for all of the tension among this group, for all of the arguments that they do have, for how personal it all eventually gets, they are able to sustain an adult conversation far more respectfully than all of the other parents who are typing. And it's an interesting crossover with both of these plays, actually. There is a lot said and there's a lot that you can take from it about the way in which we communicate and the way in which we present and articulate our perspectives and the extent to which we are able to really meaningfully hear each other. Little crossover moment for you there. And this is where Eureka Day gets even more profound, because it would be so easy, so, so easy to write a play about disagreement on vaccination policy, especially in the current very divisive political Climate where everyone is so used to being diametrically opposed, and for what they all perceive to be entirely good reasons. I'm not here to criticize anyone's individual stance, socially or politically, but in we come to find out that there is a humanity to each of these individuals. This play denies you the opportunity to caricature any of them as ignorant to the prevailing scientific opinion. Because the character of Suzanne, for example, played wonderfully by Jessica Hecht, who is decidedly the most opposed to the idea of enforcing vaccinations among the children, reveals to Karina, who is the new member of the group, who sort of inadvertently usurps her over the course of the play. She tells her about her experiences of parental grief, and she tells this extraordinarily moving story through which no one, no one on stage, no one in the audience is able to deny her her feelings about vaccines. And yet it also takes nothing away from the ideas which Karina is articulating in response. It doesn't change the way that we felt about it walking into the theatre. That's not what this play and its writer, Jonathan Spector, are setting out to try and do here. It's not about the vaccines, it's any of these particular social issues. I think it's a little bit about the way that we perceive each other's humanity in spite of debate and in spite of this kind of opinionated opposition. Amber Gray plays Karina and resembles, for much of it, a sort of an insert for the audience. She is getting to know these personalities and getting to know the way that this group works as. As much as we are. And while she has opinions quite quickly about many of the matters that they are discussing, especially when we get into the vaccinations of it all, she doesn't emboldened to articulate them. We experience the idea of a couple of racial microaggressions and in one form or another, the quashing of different people's opinions, but done in a very polite way, the idea of suppressing what someone is saying or curtailing them, while at all times apologizing and suggesting that that isn't what you are in fact doing. We see that happening most often with Suzanne speaking over another board member, Miko, played by Chelsea Yukura Kurtz, who becomes increasingly tense, frustrated about this, alongside a lot of other personal stuff that's going on, enthroned within which is her relationship with Eli, played by Thomas Middleditch, which functions, I think, as an interesting component and another dimension to the group, and the sort of the internal politics of these five people, and it gives the two of them a purpose. While Suzanne and Karina really surface as the two principal characters within the narrative, I do think the relationship and the awkwardness around it and the barriers that it soon encounters, really, when it comes to their children and putting their health and their priorities first, is something that we could explore a little bit more. And while those two have shifts in opinion and personal revelations, we don't invest quite as much time in finding out about them as we do with Karina and Suzanne. Going back to Karina and Amber Gray's brilliant performance, what's so satisfying is the moment when she does finally own her opinions and her place on the board and is able to articulate, articulate to Suzanne with conviction why she feels this is so important and is so baffled by the indifference about a vaccine policy. Ultimately, it is her conviction and it is her resoluteness that shifts the dynamics and the power dynamics within the group. And it's with this late shift that we see Jessica Hecht really at the height of her powers here. The extraordinary vulnerability of Suzanne, the extraordinary humanity that she puts on display here, all the while fostering a shred of likability for this woman so hugely opposed to the idea of vaccinating these children in the face of a mumps outbreak and so insistent on the protections of personal liberties for the parents and utilizing technicalities and the idea that the board has to agree on an idea unanimously, that being a quirk of the bylaws and a huge component in the way that this plot works. But while we sort of study her at the beginning to decide, decide whether or not this meek and apologetic exterior is a front as she seems to dismiss the opinions of those around her and seems to take up space, all the while talking about giving deference to everyone else, just as Don is doing. Any sense of a polite facade melts away when she delivers this powerful monologue, talking about her own experiences to Karina and revealing why it is that she feels so strongly about this and why she can't possibly bring herself to change her mind. And then it is obliterating completely when she is taken by surprise and sort of turns that little bit more monstrous in the group as she is really infuriated at the idea of being ostracized from this community that she has belonged to for so many years and is sort of clinging to in perhaps a mentally unhealthy way. Jessica Hecht's deeply human and utterly dimensional portrait of what ultimately feels like perhaps a very functionally Damaged Woman is the heartbreaking and unsettling and raw and honest and real. Bill Irwin, meanwhile, gave a quintessentially Bill Irwin performance. Deeply funny, very charming and utterly mild mannered. His reaction to the emerging power struggle in the board, the kind of a shift that he is personally so indifferent to because of the nature of his personality, is really quite fascinating to watch. And Jonathan Spector's writing is so interesting here. These are polite acquaintances who get to know each other a little better, who rub up against each other's tensions and irritations, but are ultimately forced to brutal honesty and these violent clashes of opinion. And what's so interesting to me is the way that their dialogue and their behavior and the way that that is characterized shifts when they have to reveal a more honest version of themselves. That is not a polite presentation. For the sake of this after school meeting of parents and teachers. That smart and careful direction I told you about earlier was the work of Anna D. Shapiro, leading a brilliant creative team. I love a completely real set, especially for something as grounded as this is, as naturalistic as this is in its delivery. I love that we were just in an entire library and we can see out to the plants outside and we can see the sky and it feels like a very deliberate setting as well. Not only are they surrounded by what represents knowledge and all of these different perspectives with all of these different books, but also they are at the heart of the thing. They are in their children's school, sat on chairs that really seem to be made for their children, sat around in a circle taking them back to the idea of early infancy and education. And in a way they do regress to occasionally these very childish manners, but with social division and intolerance and, you know, the challenges and just the way that we're able to engage with each other when it comes to differences of opinion having become so strained and so difficult. There's also something there about the sense of learning to debate and communicate again and really listen to each other as if for the first time, as if they are back at school. Not only that, there is an easy comedy from the darkness of the places that this goes to, especially in that virtual town hall parent meeting moment, surrounded by these bright, oversaturated adolescent colors and all of this mud slinging and an ultra French friendly environment. A truly terrific play, one that I think has gained an extraordinary amount of resonance and also a little bit of comedy having now been staged years after it was first written, after it first premiered. I think post Pandemic, this hits very differently and strikes with a little more force. I'm very excited for this to go on to have productions elsewhere. There was scheduled to be a production at the Kennedy center amidst the ongoing situation with that, which is a different conversation for another day. That run has been pulled. I hope that isn't too long before we see Eureka day elsewhere. Next up, we had English, which if you don't know, is a Pulitzer Prize winning play, which is among the most significant accolades for dramatic works. This entire cast of five were all making their Broadway debut with this play, as was its writer, Sanaz Tousi. Now, this one takes place, interestingly enough, also in a classroom. This is set in Iran and it features a group, group of four learners preparing with the support of their teacher to take the TOEFL exam that is T O E F L, a test of English as a foreign language. For each of them, this is really significant. This is a huge challenge for them to overcome and it's a really important qualification for them to gain. They each have their own reasons, their own motivations for wanting to take this test and achieve the qualification. For one of them, a very dedicated and hard working prospective medical student, it is a condition of her admission to a prestigious university to begin doing important work. There's also another learner, an older woman for whom learning English is an important part of preparing to emigrate and go and live in Canada, I believe, with her expatriate son and his family. These are completely different individuals from different walks of life, all sharing this common goal. What isn't entirely common, however, is their grasp of English as a second language. Now, before we go any further with a description of the events of this play, I need to tell you about the way in which we understand as an audience which language they are speaking, whether English or Farsi, at any given moment. Because the device used here is so, so clever. The idea is that when they are speaking in their own native tongue of Farsi, they do so with a natural accent, only given that this was on Broadway. The accent that we heard was an American accent. It was relaxed, it was not forced, it was not strained. When they are speaking English, they imitate the idea of English being spoken by an Iranian with, with a strained accent, with pauses in between words, with an element of discomfort, with the inability to communicate and articulate certain letters, which begins as a neat enough and surprisingly easy to grasp device that lets the audience know what language they're speaking at any given time. Although initially everyone is meant to only be speaking English, some of them soon deviate from this as they defy the instructions of the classroom. In fact, it's written on the whiteboard by their teacher, Marjan, that they should only be speaking English, and there are to be penalties if they don't. It is the hugely driven student, Elhan, who is the first to really dissent from this, not only in opposition to her teacher, with whom she increasingly has something of a personal difference, but really an objection to the English language, for which she has an extraordinary distaste. She loves and embraces Farsi, celebrates its poetry, thinks that it's beautiful, and resents the idea that she is forced by the nature of the world to have to learn English. And this is what's really interesting, is where we start to get to each character's relationship with language. But beyond that, that's the most surface level interpretation of what this play might be and is, you know, important and interesting enough. Beyond that, the real brilliance and genius of this is the very fresh conversations that this has about the idea of the way that you present yourself to the world and by extension, the person that that makes you, the reality of that exists and how that changes in a different language. The idea of living in another country, speaking English as a second language, and not being able to communicate humor in the same way. There's a line in the play, something about, you will go years without making anyone laugh. And this is also something that we are empowered to glimpse through that device I was telling you about, through the two different accents used in delivery, because we see the personalities shift in accordance with this as well. As Elha Khan is evidently focusing so hard on delivering correct English with great personal strain, it makes her more intense and more frustrated and more direct. She does not communicate with as much grace as she would if she was speaking Farsi. And this difference between the two also exists on a spectrum, because for the teacher Marjan, who, as you might expect, is the strongest English speaker in the room, there is very little in her delivery of what is meant to be English that indicates it's said with an accent, but still one that we can just about hear. This seems like the toughest class that she has ever had to contend with. For a handful of reasons. There is perhaps an unprofessionally close, though never really crossing the line, relationship with one of the learners. The only man in the class, his name is Omid. He is resented by Elhan for his extraordinary grasp on English English. She insists that he ought to be taking a more advanced class, and it isn't appropriate for him to be learning among the rest of them. But this is an early part of why he is able to forge a close bond with Marjan, the teacher. He also clearly has a certain amount of affection for her, which is soon enough reciprocated. The two of them progress English study by watching romantic comedies together. But as revelations begin to unfold about his personal circumstances, it becomes clear that that isn't going to be able to continue. If at any point the idea of simply learning a language seems to be this trivial and unimportant thing, the consequences of English and of the details of their lives for each of them being so huge, remind us of the weight of this and of the intensity of it. So every time someone is forgetting the word for dishwasher or whatever it may be in a classroom, as they're playing these games that their teacher has devised in order to try and afford them more easy familiarity and comfort with the language, if that seems silly and insincere, we are quickly reminded that it isn't. My personal response to this is quite different. I speak English as a first language and I don't speak many second languages well. But as a former educator who for a few years in a row taught a class of adult learners, it is this wildly specific thing that I recognized so quickly, because there is, with the best will in the world, a certain amount of discomfort, I think, for anyone returning to a classroom later in life life to equip yourself with skills in a topic that you struggled with to some extent when you were younger, you do have the slight oddity of teaching adult learners who may be of a similar age or maybe older than you, which makes for, just as we see in the play, English occasionally, some interesting and challenging power dynamics. I recognize in the character of Marjan, played coincidentally by Marjan Neshat, so much diplomacy and. And grace becoming more and more strained, but also this visible desperation to import not only the skills of the language and the use of the language, but also the love that she had for it. A love which we see sort of becoming a flickering flame throughout the course of the play. Her performance was a thing of tremendous beauty, not just in the subtleties between the two different accents with which she spoke the dialogue, but in. In those moments when we see her being tested, when we see her resolve tested by Elhan, when we see this perfect professional conduct begin to slip ever so slightly from her grasp. And critically, the moment when she goes from being a teacher to being an entirely rounded human being with her own concerns and anxieties and a life outside of the classroom, just as they all have just as we've been hearing about now alongside and perhaps opposite her, Elham is the brilliant character played by Tala Ash. She has failed this test multiple times in the past. A fact about herself she does not wish to be revealed to the other members of the group. There is an indignity that comes with that. There is a shame that comes with that. We see her becoming wildly competitive with the other learners as they are playing a game where they each have to list in English items from a particular category, like things that you might find in a kitchen. This is a huge source of comedy. But her character never stays comedic for long because she does have a very sort of unfalteringly intense perspective on the necessity of learning English. For her, more so than anyone else, this is urgent and this is necessary and it needs to happen now and it's not happening fast enough. She holds herself to an extraordinarily high academic standard, which she is able to achieve in other circles subjects, but not in this language. She also perceives favoritism in the classroom and isn't reluctant to say something about it. She also oversteps when it comes to talking to the other learners about their accents, about their own, learning about their own lives, really. All of which is this lashing out which seems to come from a place of inadequacy and low self esteem around this particular skill. And yet there is a moment, and this is something of a spoiler for the ending of the play. Although I still don't really know know what it is that I'm spoiling. When she and Mara Jan finally do communicate on stage in Farsi. For those of us in the audience who did not speak Farsi and weren't able to perceive what the two of them were saying to each other, it's only a very short exchange. But what's really extraordinary about it is the way that their resolve shifts. There's an intimacy to it as well. They understand each other on a level they never have before. When they have a very short exchange in Farsi. It's a beautiful thing to see and it really captures many of the ideas of the piece. It's familiar just to have another little crossover moment with Eureka Day of the moment when Karina was suddenly capable of understanding Suzanne on a deeper level because she shared more of her experience with her, there is a separate moment in English that feels a little familiar of this as well. As we learn more about Mahjan and the life that she's led. It's impossible, incidentally, to see this play and and encounter these characters and not feel extraordinarily sympathetic to the challenges of not only having to learn English as a second language, but assimilating into an entirely different culture. Talking through the rest of the company, we also have Ava Lala Zarzadeh, who brings much of the brilliant wit and comedy of this play. She plays the youngest learner in the group, one whose eagerness to experience Western culture and whose naivety is something of an affair affront to Elham, but provides an extraordinary amount of endearing charm. The absolute comic height of this is when she prepares a sort of a report on Ricky Martin's song she Bangs. She takes the lyrics at such face value that she interprets the throwaway line, it's something like you're switching sides like a Gemini. Excuse me if I don't remember all of the lyrics to Ricky Martin's She Bangs, but apparently more of them than I thought I'd did. And she clarifies that, like Ricky Martin is singing about a woman who is born in either May or June because that's when Geminis happen. That brilliant joke is completely emblematic of her hysterical performance. Entirely different in characterization is Poo Jani, who plays Roya, the older woman who is excited to go and live with her son and his family. Her English, from my recollection, may even be a little worse than Elham's, but she doesn't have the same insecurity around it, which Elham also finds frustrating and tries to sort of impart insecurities to her. It's a little bit Misery Love's Company in that way. Finally, then, the company is completed by Hadi Tabal, who plays Omid, perhaps the most enigmatic character, discoveries about whom lead to some of the play's more major turning points and character shifts and revelations. There is also, because of the circumstances that we find out about, a really palpable hesitation to many of the choices that he makes. The way that he plays, this charmed infatuation with his teacher and this slowly kindling attraction between the two of them, and the regret that he has about this subsequently is all really carefully done and beautifully done. Now Sanaz's extraordinary play has been directed for this production by Knud Adams, and again we are in a very naturalistic classroom set, except that this was one is an isolated square that spins around on an empty stage, revolving between the classroom setting where we spend most of our time, and the outdoor entrance where students can have more informal and more personal conversations. English only being the strictly enforced rule of the classroom. It creates an inherent tension And a sort of an authoritative quality for the language as its own character. Once we enter the classroom space, quickly alerting the audience to the realization that those scenes which take place outside of the classroom are able to be a little bit more personal and a little more vulnerable. There's a lot of beautiful silent work done as well. Moments when Mahjan is preparing her classroom. A moment when Elham arrives early and Mahjan finds her. And the two of them try to communicate both about their feelings when it comes to the language, but also when it comes to to that classroom environment. And again, just like with Eureka Day, it's not a question of right and wrong. Here we see from both of them, from Mahjan and Elham, behavior which we don't necessarily believe to be reasonable. But once you find out what is motivating them, once you find out about the frustrations and everything that has come before in their lives, everything that is leading them to feel this way and to behave this way way, it's entirely understandable. We discover their humanity and perhaps much of the brilliance of English is calculatedly concealing that from us via the use of a second language and the way that that diminishes each of their ability to really present honestly and authentically their character. The master trick of this play is not simply engineering sympathy for anyone learning or communicating in English as a second language, although it does do the that very, very well. But it's in landing so powerfully the revelation of how difficult it is to be the person who you are in a different language, of simply existing in a different language and retaining yourself and knowing yourself and allowing other people to know you that way as well. Another truly remarkable piece of theatre. So, like I said, two completely brilliant plays which I had the pleasure to see on Broadway earlier this year. I hope that both of them are recognized substantially when it comes to the Tony Awards, which we'll be announcing nominations towards the very end of April, the very beginning of May, and which will be awarded in early June. I am very much looking forward to it. In the meantime, there are still a few more plays yet to arrive and open on Broadway. The likes of Purpose, which is currently in previews by Brandon Jacobs. Jenkins, as well as John Proctor, is the villain. And those are not the only ones. I hope to be able to cover as much of this Broadway season as I can. So stay tuned for my reviews hopefully of those plays as well as more. Thank you so much for listening to these reviews. I hope that you've enjoyed. If you did, make sure you are following me. Make sure you're subscribed right here on YouTube with notifications turned on so you don't miss any of my upcoming reviews and other theatrical content. And as always, make sure to comment down below with your own thoughts and feelings about each of these plays. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For ten more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh, my God. Hey, thanks for watching have a Stagey day subscrib.