As the US approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence declaration, Tracy Letts’ The Minutes takes a troubling look back at our complicated past—in the present case, through the blinkers of a tedious weekly meeting of a small town city council. Challenges are made, and met. As one character says, “History is a verb.”
If the ending of the play is a little over the top, nevertheless the playwright’s message is clear. However, a key argument of the debate is knocked over quickly with a smidgen of what-about-ism (perhaps to keep the piece at its 90-minute running time); one wishes for a deeper, more nuanced engagement with the issue.
Timothy H. Lynch as Mr. Oldfield adds a bit of comedy to the proceedings, as the council’s most senior member but no longer its most compos mentis.
- The Minutes, by Tracy Letts, directed by Susan Marie Rhea, The Keegan Theatre, Washington
Thinking about this play from a more personal standpoint, I begin to wonder whether I am in the target audience for this play, or for that matter, something like The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse, a much more facile work. Maybe I’ve already read enough David Treuer: I get it, already.
I was talking to a (younger than me, middle-aged) colleague some time ago, and we both expressed the feeling that much new theater these days has become, well, preachy. Mind you, I am still noticing new, challenging good work out there (e.g, The Great Privation, Soft Power). But maybe, now that I am in my legit crotchety years, the arc of my own moral universe has bent as far as it will go.