The ones whose lives are upended

I went to the Hilberry Theatre last evening to see the play Sweat by Lynn Nottage. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2017. The setting is in a bar in Reading, Pennsylvania in 2000. The characters work on the floor at an area factory – well, the bartender Stan did and his assistant Oscar will. It is the life they know and in many cases the lives their parents and grandparents knew.

This is just after the tech stock crash. Companies are moving operations to other countries. And these characters are the ones whose lives are upended. Tracey, Cynthia, and Jessie are good friends until Cynthia is promoted to supervisor. Tracey accuses her of getting the job because she is black. Cynthia’s ex-husband Brucie worked at a different factory where a strike has now stretched to almost two years. Brucie is now an addict. Tracey’s son Jason and Cynthia’s son Chris are best friends. Chris wants to go to college to become a teacher, but Jason tells him why take the low wages of a teacher over the better wages of a factory job? Chris doesn’t have money for college anyway.

Then the rest of them are locked out of the factory after their machines are hauled out in the middle of the night. Cynthia is accused of not fighting sufficiently hard to keep their jobs. They all become desperate and defiant.

Reading, PA is the setting because in 2011 it was one of the poorest cities in America with a poverty level of 40%. Playwright Nottage spent more than two years interviewing numerous residents. She constructed her play from their stories.

This is the Hilberry, so of course the production was well done and well acted. I was particularly impressed with the guy who played Brucie.

The website Encore Michigan posts reviews of professional theater productions across the state – at least the ones that have a run long enough for them to post a review before the end of a run. David Kiley wrote the review for this play. I think Kiley wrote more about the background of the play than the play itself – the specific plot and the quality of the production and acting.

There are two more performances – tonight and tomorrow.