THE MINUTES WILL LEAVE YOU
SLACK-JAWED AND SPEECHLESS
Superbly civic, the vast council chamber created by set designer David Zinn reeks of rectitude. Filling the stage at Studio 54 is a coffered arched ceiling with hanging strips of fluorescent lights. In the hallway outside this imposing space is a bulletin board with children’s art, while the vast room is festooned with plaques, proclamations, and a World War I-era mural of maidens. This imposing auditorium oozes continuity, respectability and local pride. A prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance are recited. It’s the prelude to a closed town council’s meeting. But something is amiss: It’s been raining for two weeks, often accompanied by Sensurround thunder (awesome sound by André Pluess) and the lights keep flickering, accompanied by a loud buzz — a disruption taken as normal.
But this will not be a regular session.
JEFF STILL, TRACY LETTS, and CLIFF CHAMBERLAIN
Photo:Jeremy Daniel / IG @JeremyDanielPhoto
This is the traditional but treacherous locale for the Broadway premiere of The Minutes from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. In this latest provocation by Tracy Letts (August: Osage County, Bug, Killer Joe, Linda Vista) — archly shaped by director Anna D. Shapiro — the banality of evil gets a brand new whitewash.
The tiny burg of Big Cherry is unexceptional, and the meeting follows suit. Mainly there’s Friday night football, a proposed town-square fountain renovation, and the village’s beloved founders’ festival: The annual celebration of the Battle of Mackle Creek proudly reenacts the town’s 1867 salvation from savages, after which a kidnapped little innocent was returned to her family. The rescuer pronounced the town’s eventual slogan: “Here is your future!” It’s also, fatefully, their past.
JESSIE MUELLER, NOAH REID , JEFF STILL, TRACY LETTS and CLIFF CHAMBERLAIN
Photo: Jeremy Daniel / IG @JeremyDanielPhoto
We’re privy to the November 1st meeting, presided over by clout-laden Mayor Superba (avuncular to aggressive Mr. Letts, whose awesome presence validates his Tony win for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). The nine lawmakers of Big Cherry — some weathervanes, some simply under sway, perhaps one or two solons — indulge in self-serving log-rolling, petty squabbles over parking privileges, and small-town small talk about the rain and a plague of ants. Senile, well-named Mr. Oldfield (the hysterically befuddled Austin Pendleton) brags of his 37 years on the committee, though for him coping with the next moment presents a challenge. Though African-American, devious councilor Blake (the sturdy K. Todd Freeman) proposes a permanent entertainment — a “Lincoln Smackdown” cage-match allowing haters of Honest Abe to go one-on-one with an impersonator of the 16th President.
BLAIR BROWN and AUSTIN PENDLETON
Photo: Michael Brosilow
But there’s a serious side too: Rebellious new council-member Mr. Peel (an astounding Broadway debut by the multifaceted Noah Reid), absent from the last meeting because of the death of his mother, wonders why the minutes from October 25th have not been published. And why was council member Carp (Ian Barford) kicked off the council and has now disappeared? According to distinguished dowager Ms. Innes (Blair Brown), a “crisis of confidence” threatens the upper echelons of this all-American hamlet.
TRACY LETTS and NOAH REID
Photo: Jeremy Daniel / IG @JeremyDanielPhoto
Then there’s the strange seemingly innocuous business with police-confiscated bikes that weren’t, as ordered, donated to a charity, instead sold by the mayor’s legislative crony (Jeff Still) to finance a fire engine for the festival. If all politics is personal, this brouhaha gets quickly real, with crusader Peel pursuing this seeming scam, demanding that the minutes be read by the reluctant council clerk (Jessie Mueller), and, well, no more can be disclosed. (My minutes remain sealed.)
JESSIE MUELLER and NOAH REID
Photo: Jeremy Daniel / IG @JeremyDanielPhoto
It is safe to say that Letts’ Kafkaesque piece of Americana is equal parts Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, and a bit of Stephen King and The Twilight Zone. Combined you get a heavy hint at the menace behind The Minutes. In these 100 minutes, Letts delivers his usual sardonic-to-scathing dialogue, cunning contradictions, jokes that are defiantly on us, and a horripilating denouement — while not as surprising as it could have been — that turns the American Dream on its ear.
Corruption, like charity, begins at home. Shapiro’s sharp-edged cast of eleven accomplish deft comic turns amid darkening doings. As for the meaning of The Minutes, well, “Here’s your future.”
The Minutes
Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Studio 54 on Broadway, 254 West 54th St.
opened April 17, 2022 (reviewed April 21)
ends on Sunday, July 24, 2022
for tickets, call 800-447-7400 or visit The Minutes