![]() (Fairy tales and rituals alike love an innocent orphan.) At the opposite end, the eldest statesman (Austin Pendleton) has been serving for 39 years, and could he please have a parking spot to show for it? Seven men (all but one of them white) and three women (also white) assemble for the quorum. Though he missed the previous week’s meeting to bury his mother, he’s sunny and eager and naive. Peel ( Noah Reid of “Schitt’s Creek”) is the freshman of the group and something of a babe in the woods. Ana Kuzmanić’s costumes immediately define each character as to how they wish to be perceived.Mr. Quite a collection although all recognizable. ![]() He also gives the mayor a sinister slant which prepares us for the shocking ending. Letts’ suave Mayor Superba has had the job for 16 years and all look up to him. Johnson, the town council clerk, may be named after Samuel Johnson whose biographer Boswell followed him around and took notes on everything he did, while Mr. Assalone has to contend with his name being mispronounced as “ass–alone” rather than his preferred pronunciation of “ass-a–lone–e.” Jessie Mueller’s Ms. Hanratty like his name is an attacker who fights to get his way. Blake is the only person of color on the council and desperately wants to be accepted by the others. Breeding appears to be to-the-manor-born, Sally Murphy’s awkward Ms. Peel wants to remove the layers to find the truth, Cliff Chamberlain’s golf-playing Mr. Oldfield is almost senile, Noah Reid’s Mr. Innes is the self-involved council person, Austin Pendleton’s Mr. Carp is the fault-finding one, Blair Brown’s Ms. The ensemble cast is uniformly excellent in roles that could have easily been generic as each name is a character type: Ian Barford’s Mr. Jessie Mueller and Noah Reid in a scene from Tracy Letts’ new play “The Minutes” at Studio 54 (Photo credit: Jeremy Daniel) And like a good old-fashioned horror story which is what the play eventually becomes, periodic thunder (by sound designer André Pluess) and lightning (by lighting designer Brian MacDevitt) as well as the temporary sudden blackouts add to the growing sense that something is not right. Under Shapiro’s astute direction, the play changes genres fairly regularly but remarkably the tone remains consistent. Tracy Letts is taking on America’s ability to delude itself into rewriting the unpleasant facts of its past. Ultimately there is the question of the town’s history. Then there is the hint of corruption, nepotism and self-aggrandizement. The Minutes begins as high satire with sarcastic remarks about disabled people and people living in poverty. What is the secret that all appear to be hiding? But where are the minutes of that meeting of October 23 which have for the first time not been distributed to vote on. Carp’s tenure on the council was terminated last week. Carp anywhere to be seen, but he is told that Mr. After the greetings and condolences, no one can tell him what happened at the last meeting. Peel has missed the last meeting due to the death of his mother. Jeff Still, Tracy Letts and Cliff Chamberlain in a scene from Tracy Letts’ new play “The Minutes” at Studio 54 (Photo credit: Jeremy Daniel)ĭavid Zinn’s realistic and elaborate set puts us right in the city council meeting room in the town of Big Cherry, somewhere in the Midwest. Todd Freeman, Austin Pendleton and Jeff Still, as well as author Letts. Shapiro, the Tony Award-winning director of Letts’ August: Osage County and artistic director of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company where the play premiered in 2017, The Minutes also includes Steppenwolf company members Ian Barford, Cliff Chamberlain, K. ![]() Its high-powered cast includes Tony Award-winners Blair Brown, Jessie Mueller and, for the first time appearing in one of his own plays, Tracy Letts himself. Conceived and written mostly before the 2016 election, not only is The Minutes a powerful and shocking play but it also has a good deal to say about how America lives now. His latest play The Minutes, a Pulitzer Prize nominee in 2018, which takes on America’s political and social institutions, begins as a comedy, segues into a drama, then becomes a mystery and ultimately is a horror story. Tracy Letts, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of August: Osage County, continues to surprise by demonstrating his range with new genres and new departures.
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