It's a rare treat to get to see so many fine actors together on the stage. Tracy Letts has written The Minutes, a rather disturbing drama which, at times, is downright funny. Letts appears as Mayor Superba, who is chairing a meeting of the local school board.
The subject veers from the sublime to the ridiculous. How, in the little town of Big Cherry, did one hundred bikes go missing? Who has them, and what is to become of them? Who gets the money for them? The latest member of the board, Mr. Peel (Noah Reid) is obsessed with what became of a former member, Mr. Carp (Ian Barford), and why the minutes of the last meeting seem to be missing. Mr. Reid's work is not familiar to me, but I will be looking for him in the future; he is excellent.
Planning for a pageant to honor the supposed town hero is a very big deal. Members of the board strip off their jackets automatically to enact the rescue of Little Debbie from the dastardly Indians. This is pretty strange, but that's in keeping with the play. In fact, it gets stranger and stranger.
The first half of the show is, frankly, pretty boring, despite the fine work of Blair Brown (Mrs. Innes), Jessie Mueller (Ms. Johnson), Sally Murphy (Ms. Matz), and Austin Pendleton (Mr. Oldfield). The last few moments of the piece are simply baffling, although I've been assured that others in the house found the finale easily understandable and not at all creepy. So, as the old saying goes, "You pay your money, and take your choice."
