Boiling point
Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Sweat’ a searing look at struggles of working class Americans,
Sweat
(out of 4) Written by Lynn Nottage. Directed by David Storch. Until Feb. 2 at the Berkeley Street Theatre, 26 Berkeley St. canadianstage.com or 416-368-3110
Everyone knows each other’s names and their troubles are all the same. But “Cheers” this is not; the Reading, Pa., bar in Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prizewinning drama isn’t the place where its regulars go to escape their stresses.
Instead it’s the meeting place where tensions pool into a combustible mixture of economic insecurity, racism, sexism, addiction, toxic masculinity and despair.
Alternating between 2000 and 2008, before and after a local factory lays off hundreds for outsourcing, automization and cheaper non-unionized jobs, Nottage’s script is a modern tragedy in a sitcom setting.
It plunges into the very real repercussions when the good times that the American Dream sold to the working class disappear. The image of American culture as one of carefree liberties and financial comfort has been replaced by unmet expectations and furious feelings of entitlement now that late-stage capitalism has been revealed as a raw deal.
This isn’t surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention to the news. But what contributed to Nottage’s second Pulitzer Prize win — beyond her ability to build deeply sympathetic characters who do despicable things in a time and place that articulate a very complex cultural moment — was her prescience. Nottage spent two and a half years interviewing residents of the real-life Reading to get an immersive view of poverty in America, inspired by the Occupy movement and the secret financial troubles of those around her.
“Sweat” premiered shortly before the 2016 election that put Donald Trump in the White House and became a tool to explain the frustrations of rural America that the election exposed.
Now making its Toronto debut in a co-production between Canadian Stage and Studio 180 Theatre, “Sweat” is far from dated. But with job insecurity, factory closures and the gig economy far more advanced today, it’s particularly jarring as a brutal and blunt portrayal of the first sting of capitalism’s failures. In 2008, we meet Chris (Christopher Allen) and Jason (Timothy Dowler-Coltman) soon after their release from prison after a vague incident involving them both. Chris clutches his Bible and hopes to finally get to teacher’s college, and Jason clutches a wooden chair with such ferocity one fears it will snap. Adding to this ferocity is a severely clenched jaw and several Nazi tattoos along his forehead.
The scenes taking place in 2000 demonstrate the lead-up to that fateful night, taking place entirely in a local haunt for factory workers run by Vietnam vet Stan (Ron Lea), a former factory worker on disability, and his Colombian bar-back Oscar (Jhonattan Ardila). Longtime friends and coworkers Cynthia (Ordena Stephens-Thompson), who is African-American; Tracey (a particularly frightening Kelli Fox), who is German-American; and Jessie (Allegra Fulton), who is
Italian-American, also frequent the bar. All of this doesn’t really matter, until Cynthia gets a promotion at the plant.
From the get-go, we see how alcohol plays a major role in easing the characters’ stresses in work and love, which are weighty but pale in comparison to what’s to come. With inhibitions alleviated and tensions between class and race in a pressure cooker, decades of friendship fracture and devolve into more immediately harmful coping mechanisms. Once the meeting place becomes tainted, the last bit of hope is lost.
Nottage’s script, deserving of its prize, pays non-judgmental attention to the reasons behind our contemporary anger and intolerance without letting those who partake in it off the hook. Storch’s direction leans in a bit harder, sending his actors into a near-constant level of intensity.
On a stunning set by Ken MacKenzie that puts the rust in Rust Belt and blends seamlessly into the red brick walls of the Berkeley Street Theatre, the ensemble is almost constantly humming with angst; it risks bulldozing over a more nuanced build to its explosive conclusion.
Tracey’s racism is just a little too sharp from the beginning, as are the desperate theatrics of Brucie (Peter N. Bailey) and Chris’s decibels when he’s upset.
For a story born so clearly from reality, the production sometimes feels too self-conscious of its drama, its importance, of its characters. Video montages of news clips, music videos and award shows of the era make links to the Bush administration it bookends, but it’s not clear message what these clips tell other than that these events happened and so did the events of this play.
But despite a treatment that feels like it skates on the surface, these actors are working ferociously. It’s interesting to see sweat glisten on their faces as the script so clearly lays out what sweat really means: it means hard labour, it’s both a badge of honour and a mark of shame. The dream is to not have to sweat anymore, but when the opportunity to sweat is taken away so is a person’s identity.
Without the work they’ve depended on, these characters have taken their sweat back — only this time, it’s from the heat of the spotlight. Perhaps, right now, that’s what they need most.