Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) previously revealed that it would add “Eureka Day” to its 2024-2025 Broadway season. A couple of months later came the announcement of the highly-awaited casting.
Tony Award-winning Bill Irwin, Tony Award nominees Amber Gray and Jessica Hecht, along with Emmy Award nominee Thomas Middleditch, and Zoë Chao will star in the Anna D. Shapiro-directed Broadway premiere.
Jonathan Spector’s comedy will play MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, beginning previews on November 25, with opening night set for December 16.
Previously helmed by several other directors like Josh Costello, Adrienne Campbell-Holt and Katy Rudd with performances at different venues, “Eureka Day” had its world premiere at Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley, California in 2017. It met Off-Broadway audiences at Walkerspace in 2019 before an acclaimed engagement in London’s West End in 2022.
Set at a school in California, “Eureka Day” tells the story of a mumps outbreak which leads to a dispute between parents on the executive committee regarding the school’s liberal vaccination policy.
“In Jonathan Spector’s timely and hysterical comedy,” the introduction reads, “polite debate descends into ideological warfare, as a democratic utopia tears itself apart.”
Actor and choreographer Irwin won the Tony Award for his performance in the revival “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 2005. He appeared in many other Broadway productions including “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?,” “Bye Bye Birdie,” “The Iceman Cometh,” and more, as well as TV shows such as “Law & Order,” “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” “The Good Wife,” “This Is Us,” “Star Trek: Discovery,” and more.
Making her Broadway debut in 2016’s “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” Gray is also known for her performance in “Hadestown” which earned her a Tony nomination.
Hecht is well known for her roles in “Friends” and “Breaking Bad” on TV, but she has an expansive career on Broadway, too, where she was nominated for Tony Award twice for her performances in “A View from the Bridge” and “Summer, 1976.”
“Eureka Day” marks Thomas Middleditch’s Broadway debut. The actor is an Emmy Award nominee for the “Silicon Valley” show. Zoë Chao recently starred in the film “If You Were the Last,” and TV shows like “Strangers,” “Succession,” “The Afterparty,” and more.
The creative team for Eureka Day’s Broadway premiere will be announced at a later date.
The production belongs to MTC, under the leadership of artistic director Lynne Meadow and executive director Chris Jennings, by special arrangement with Sonia Friedman Productions, Wagner Johnson Productions and Seaview.
