Just what kind of community do you want to live in? Ask yourself that the next time you think about running for town council or stepping up to attend a city hall meeting. It’s a valid question. What kind of community do you want to live in? It’s a surface level question that could have a surface level answer. It could also be a fathomless question with a bottomless answer that really gut-checks reality for you. Find out which specifically Tracy Letts is addressing in the DC-premiere of his visceral play The Minutes now appearing live on-stage at The Keegan Theatre for the penultimate mainstage production of their 29th season. Directed by Susan Marie Rhea, this stunning and evocative dramady explores the cankerous truths nestled deep in the darkness of small-town politics and is a mind-blowing theatrical experience well-worth seeing.
The play itself could honestly be pitched as a political comedy; a cross-section into smalltown life by lens of the town-hall/council meeting. All the little gripes and grievances, humors and whatnot are ripe for the plucking but playwright Tracy Letts dives so much deeper and it’s a lovely little laughing event right up until it isn’t. And once it isn’t— it hits. And it doesn’t just hit— it deep-bomb devastates and really exposes some ugly truths that rankle with both the characters and the audiences. It’s a riveting and compelling piece of theatre that is ingeniously switched on in both its methodology and its exacting approach to weighing out the balance of human nature.
The dynamic among the town council— ten players on stage at any one time in ‘full quorum’— is fascinating. Because while they each exist on their own, with their quirks and uniqueness, there is this unifying thread of co-existence that binds them to one another… There’s real beauty in the way Tracy Letts has crafted some of these characters as they could read like stereotypes bordering on caricatures if not handled correctly.
The ending of the show, led by Ray Ficca’s Mayor Superba, is disturbing on a most unsettlingly visceral level; it defies description and must be seen to be experienced and believed. It’s a really, really intense ending. The whole play, particularly once it unfolds through to the end, turns out to be one big avalanching snowball, masquerading as a political comedy about small-town, backroom politics, right up until it isn’t; right up until the universality of it and its overall impact on the world in which we live is presented in this astonishing and simultaneously grotesque, raw truth. Not to be missed by any stretch of the imagination if it can be helped, but it’s one of those: “warning— this play is not what it seems, buckle up” style shows, for sure.
