![]() ![]() Gender affirming care has been labeled by legislators as “child abuse.” The language around the various “Don’t say gay” bills-including words like “groomer”-has led to an explosion of new anti-LGBTQ prejudice-and more isolation for LGBTQ kids who need support.Īs Mr. Quite apart from what is taught in schools, hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills have been tabled in the legislatures, mostly focused on discriminating against trans kids. The outlawing of abortion, before any Supreme Court ruling on the matter, is under way state by state. It balances the comedy of small-town mundanity with a more dramatic indictment of racism and democracy’s failure.įor this critic, this play feels all too painfully up to the minute, as Republican-run legislatures seek to control what is taught in schools, doing all they can to stamp out discussion of LGBTQ and race-related issues, under a general anti-critical race theory banner. (It opened on Broadway in February 2020, before COVID-19 closed it.) The Minutes bluntly shows us how society can fall apart under faulty strip lighting, all the while following committee rules and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Peel.Īlthough the play feels beyond timely, Letts originally wrote it in 2017, as the Trump presidency ground into gear. The audience makes it clear they want to know the truth as much as the newly elected Mr. The audience’s response to the action shows that, whatever else, Letts has succeeded in making an interactive play. In their council chamber, the cast forms a semi-circle on stage, and we the audience complete the circle, watching the inner workings of the meeting. Shapiro directs, David Zinn is the designer-strikingly sets up the play’s central idea. Intentionally or not, the physical staging of The Minutes-Anna D. How does white supremacy sustain itself? How is history rewritten and corruption accommodated as a necessity to maintain white hegemony? Big Cherry is the nightmare opposite of Schitt’s Creek. Peel must battle to have them heard, and from this moment the play becomes not just an interrogation of small-town democracy but democracy itself, and how fragile and imperiled it is. How the answers are revealed, and very dark they are, give the play its title, in that everything lies in the mysteriously unready minutes of that meeting.įirst, Mr. Carp (Ian Barford), and at last week’s council meeting? No one will give Mr. Thunder is cracking outside, accompanied by torrential rain. Matz (Sally Murphy) just seems loopy.īut something really isn’t right. Assalone (Jeff Still) as that name sounds, rather than, as he eventually gives up insisting, “Mr. He’s a pediatric dentist, but not hustling for business, he says. Peel ( Schitt’s Creekstar Noah Reid) trying to make small talk over kids. Johnson (Jessie Mueller) has no time for Mr. ![]() Innes (Blair Brown) has a statement to read out that is also a rap sheet of local scandals. Mayor Superba (an avuncular-meets-menacing Letts) and his fellow council colleagues are exasperated with Oldfield’s interruptions and crotchety mischief-making. Oldfield (Austin Pendleton, scene-stealing, comic genius) is particularly exercised over parking spaces.
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