The newest play from August: Osage County Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts, The Minutes lasts only 90. And in that hour and a half, it tackles local politics, revisionist history, and quite possibly murder.
But first, the men of the Big Cherry city council—Mr. Blake (K. Todd Freeman) and Mr. Hanratty (Danny McCarthy, recently seen as Bridget Everett’s shifty brother-in-law on HBO’s Somebody Somewhere), to be specific—must debate the words impaired versus disabled versus handicapped. Then they need to discuss the meaning of semantics versus nomenclature.
The 39-year council veteran, Mr. Oldfield—played by actor, director, and ever-so-sly scene stealer Austin Pendleton—announces that he’d like to talk about parking. Wait! Everyone needs to weigh in on whether or not this actually qualifies as an announcement. “Announcing what you’d like to talk about is not an announcement, any more than announcing that you’re going to the bathroom,” Mayor Superba (played by Letts), uh, announces.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Then Ms. Innes (Blair Brown) wants to read a statement, essentially a rah-rah declaration of support for the annual Big Cherry Heritage Festival. (Don’t miss this almost throwaway line: “Sure, over the years, we’ve had our dust-ups and differences, tete-a-tetes over policy, clashes of personalities, to say nothing of a certain rape and subsequent abortion, but that’s all water under the bridge.”)
Small minds continue to clash over assorted small-town issues: Hanratty is proposing an accessible redesign of the city’s central fountain. Sniffs Mr. Breeding (Cliff Chamberlain): “I don’t know that normal people should have to suffer an onerous tax burden just so your sister can wheel up to a fountain.” Unfortunately, the project’s only other supporter is newcomer Mr. Peel (Schitt’s Creek’s Noah Reid). Far more popular—believe it or not—is Blake’s “Lincoln Smackdown” idea, which involves a cage match between a challenger and a mixed martial artist dressed as the 16th president. Gushes Innes: “I love Abraham Lincoln. And violence.”
The Minutes seems to comprise nothing more than a collection of quirky characters—the heavily medicated Ms. Matz (Sally Murphy), who hand-squeezes her own grapefruit juice mid-meeting, might be the nuttiest of the mixed nuts—until Peel keeps picking at the topic of last week’s missing minutes like the proverbial scab. Then Letts spins his satire into something of a black comedy—involving Big Cherry’s lavishly embroidered origin story, which the council members reenact with great gusto—and The Minutes spins entirely out of control.
Ultimately, Letts is making a statement about whitewashing American history, but he hauls out an entirely new character—the heretofore absent but much-discussed Mr. Carp (Linda Vista’s Ian Barford)—to do it, yielding less a moment of enlightenment and more of a screed. As for the mystifying ritualistic ending…perhaps Oldfield says it best. “Now friends, I fully expect you’re going to throw me on the floor and kick me in the face,” he says, “but I assure you I have no idea what is happening.” The feeling, regrettably, is mutual.
The Minutes opened April 17, 2022, at Studio 54 and runs through July 24. Tickets and information: theminutesbroadway.com
