![]() He also exposes the ongoing chicanery involving another council member and his brother, the police chief.) It's an ideal assignment for the authoritative Barford, who doesn't enter until about two-thirds into the play, offers a scouring blast of honesty that reduces the room to stunned silence. ![]() ![]() (No spoilers here, but his speech is as timely as the controversy over the 1619 Project or Ron DeSantis' latest censorship caper. The penny finally drops in a flashback that introduces Ian Barford as that MIA council member, who, in a blistering report, reveals that the town's history is built on a foundation of lies. Several questions nag at Noah Reid, who is new in town and the most recent addition to the team: Why is one member of the council absent and unaccounted for? Why, when his name comes up, does everyone change the subject? And how is it that the minutes from the previous meeting, which Reid missed, have not yet been prepared? The other council members, by way of deflection, are only too eager to present their re-enactment of the town's origin story - which, Reid notes, borrows heavily from the John Ford film The Searchers. But, almost immediately, it's clear that something more sinister is afoot, and not just because of the raging thunderstorm that occasionally plunges the room into darkness. In these skirmishes, The Minutes succeeds as sketch comedy, served up with pinpoint hilarity by a cast of pros. "Don't we still have sodomy laws?" Freeman wonders.) For example, councilmember Danny McCarthy's proposal for wheelchair access to the aforementioned fountain - a principal beneficiary would be his sister - bogs down in a lengthy discussion about the relative correctness of "handicapped," "impaired," and "disabled." ("'Handicapped' went out with sodomy laws," McCarthy insists. This kind of grotesque, bone-dry comedy is a Letts specialty and Shapiro's cast delivers it with faultless timing and a full appreciation for their characters' unspoken malice and passive-aggressive tactics. Todd Freeman appears relatively reasonable until he pitches an allegedly sure-fire tourist attraction known as the "Lincoln Smackdown." It's "an opportunity for anyone to fight Honest Abe in a steel cage," with an MMA fighter posing as the 16th president. ("Sure, over the years, we've had our dustups and differences, tête-à -têtes over policy, clashes of personalities, to say nothing of a certain rape and subsequent abortion, but that's all water under the bridge.") Sally Murphy, heavily medicated and accident-prone, specializes in gnomic responses to the most basic questions. (Hearing that many people toss coins in the town fountain while making wishes, he grumbles incredulously, "The wishes cost money?") Blair Brown, made up and coiffed à la Betty Ford, puts the others on edge while reading her musings into the official record. Austin Pendleton, outfitted with rumpled clothing, rumpled hair, and a rumpled visage, is the senior member, rousing himself from black despair to pose conversation-stopping questions that hint at senility. If you've ever sat on a board of directors, in an academic department meeting, or in local government, you'll recognize the species. Shapiro's production, originally staged at Steppenwolf in Chicago, rounds up a lively assortment of hair-splitting petty functionaries, each skilled in the art of obstruction. This brief, acrid comedy unfolds, more or less in real time, at a city council meeting in the town of Big Cherry - and just wait until you find what the name means - wickedly skewering its rogues' gallery of small-town bureaucrats before descending into ritualized horror.Īnna D. The Minutes is his direst prognosis yet of our body politic. He's also something of a national diagnostician, detecting alarming symptoms of a society imploding from decadence and self-absorption. In plays like Man from Nebraska, Superior Donuts, and especially August: Osage County, Tracy Letts has established himself as a specialist in Midwestern malaise. Theatre in Review: The Minutes (Studio 54)
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