Through Sun 11/4
Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat, about a small American city (Reading, PA) and people’s relationships there that begin to crumble under the threat of factory layoffs, is unbearably timely. The play shifts in time between 2008 — eight years after an incident that sent two young men to prison — and 2000, revealing the events that slowly spiral out of control.
We watch three longtime women coworkers & friends and their sons celebrate their birthdays in a bar presided over by the jovial Stan (local actor Bob Ellis). His attempts at keeping the peace as things slowly but surely go to hell lead to a powerful and heart-breaking conclusion. Laura Kepley’s production is chockablock with strong performances and the queasy sense of inevitable tragedy as neighbor turns against neighbor, and racial and anti-immigrant animosity swell up like a toxic tide.
Nottage’s play is in the tradition of political plays like Waiting for Lefty and The Cradle Will Rock, but her ability to create sympathetic characters with different viewpoints brings it heart and heft. Yet the
piece at its heart is about us, right now — a fractured country caught in the grip of late-stage capitalism, suckered into blaming each other for our hapless plights while off-stage villains plunder and loot.
Heaven help us all.