TimeLine Theatre Company

Eureka Day – Broadway Playhouse (TimeLine Theatre Company) – February 4, 2026

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Before getting into a “review” of the play Eureka Day, I wanted to make something clear for the record. I never met or, in any way communicated with, Jeffrey Epstein.

I did, however, go to a baseball game in Oakland (the play takes place in nearby Berkeley) on the evening of June 16, 1971 when Mike Epstein (no relation to Jeffrey as far as I know) hit his third and fourth consecutive home runs, having started his streak in his last two at-bats the day before. I should add that I also got to see Vida Blue that night, in his prime, pitch a complete game (if you are old enough to remember what that is).

Getting back to Eureka Day, I would like to add that I loved the totally unrelated TV show Eureka, which is still available for streaming.

And, before I forget, given his association with the word eureka, without which the name of the school in, and title of, the play would not be as clever as it is, a shout out to Archimedes, our first known streaker, and perhaps the inspiration for the 1970’s craze, which I’m sure included Berkeley.

The play first grabs our attention for the machinations the characters, members of the Eureka Day private school board, go through trying to convince each other and themselves that they are all on the same page about their world views (we’re not fooled) and how the school should operate. The administrator, in particular, might actually hurt his back bending over backwards in his role as a mealy-mouthed conciliator.

As one might imagine, attempts to not offend fall by the wayside when the topic becomes school vaccination policies (the play is set in the school year of 2018-19, when it foresightedly premiered), highlighted by the online chat with parents that had the audience in stitches and, given the topic and the location, made me consider a possible subtitle of “Sittin’ on the Doc of the East Bay.”

Everything seemingly gets resolved, thanks in part to the parents, unlike boards I have been associated with, actually reading the by-laws, as we move into the 2019-2020 school year – what could go wrong?

The Lehman Trilogy – Broadway Playhouse – October 12, 2023

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I know The Lehman Trilogy won the Tony award for best play but I have a lot of problems with it. And I’m not the only one.

The Washington Post suggested that “an American playwright [the playwright was Italian], confronted on a daily basis with the economic, cultural and historical ramifications of slavery,” would not have made the same decision to remain silent on the issue.

We’ve all become somewhat inured to the cavalier insertion of historical inaccuracies for the sake of artistic license, though I, for one, believe such liberties often make the vehicle less, not more engaging. So I won’t go into great detail regarding the ironic changes in the timeline  of events in a play produced by the TimeLine Theatre Company, as admitted in the play book itself, but can’t help but object to the reiteration of the myth that there were numerous suicides on Wall Street on Black Thursday in 1929. It’s just not true.

At least the acting was good, and I didn’t have to sit though the original five hours of the play, only three, which could have been reduced even further but for the author’s or adapter’s insistence on repeatedly using repetition until that poor horse died from a concussion.