Playwright Tracy Letts won a Pulitzer Prize and multiple Tony Awards for “August, Osage County.” His searing 2017 satire, “The Minutes,” is just as good, although its Broadway run was cut short by the pandemic. The action takes place in the Big Cherry City Council, where the minutes of its last meeting have mysteriously gone missing and new council member, Mr. Peel, is doggedly trying to find out how and why. Ryan Adair plays Peel.
“Honestly, I feel like it is a mystery, but it’s not your typical mystery,” said Adair. “There’s no Sherlock Holmes or murder most foul. But there are parts of the show that the audience pieces together the clues … as Peel pieces together the clues. It’s kind of like ‘Da Vinci Code.’ where things start to line up and he sees it in real time and starts to unravel the truth.”
Alána Rader flew in from Brooklyn to direct the show. She characterizes Peel as a truth seeker.
“It’s a town council meeting gone awry,” Rader observed. At last week’s meeting, something went down. Mr. Peel was not there because, unfortunately, his mother was passing away. So he missed that meeting. He returns, and he finds out that Mr. Carp is no longer with the council. He’s missing, and so are the minutes. So he’s trying to uncover and unearth what went down.”
Rader predicts that audiences will really like Letts' clever writing, clever dialogue, well-defined characters and dark humor.
“Audiences will also respond to the mystery elements in trying to figure out what happened to Mr. Carp,” Rader said. “And then I think the twist at the end, I don’t want to spoil anything, but it goes out with a bang and we don’t quite know what really happened, so I’m hoping that will spark some conversation afterwards for folks guessing and coming up with their own responses and decisions.”
Adair says audiences will definitely be talking about the ending long after they leave the theater.
“The end of the show is a very surprising one,” said Adair. “One that people don’t see coming. And one that hopefully they leave the theater talking about. That’s how Letts wrote it. It’s meant to be a conversation piece. The way the show ends, there’s no ta-da moment. It’s kind of a cliffhanger, and you connect the dots yourself as an audience member.”
MORE INFORMATION:
This production marks the Southwest Florida premiere of “The Minutes.”
Remaining performances are April 18, 24, 25 and 26 at 7:30 p.m. and April 19, 20 and 27 at 2 p.m. The April 24 show is a sensory-friendly performance.
Tickets are $37 each or $10 for students with valid student IDs. There is a new Thursday night special ticket price of $32 each for adults. For tickets, telephone 239-218-0481 or visit www.laboratorytheaterflorida.com.
A scathing and darkly comedic exploration of small-town politics, hidden agendas, and the power of the past, “The Minutes” peels back the layers of a seemingly mundane city council meeting to reveal shocking secrets and unsettling truths. With razor-sharp wit and gripping tension, this timely production promises to keep audiences on the edge of their seats.
When Mr. Peel returns to his town council meeting after missing the previous week for his mother’s funeral, he is shocked to find that Mr. Carp has been removed from the council. Unable to get an answer out of any other councilors as to why Mr. Carp has been removed, Peel makes it his mission to uncover the mystery of the missing councilman. As the play goes on, it becomes clear that this is not just a run-of-the-mill corruption scandal – something much darker is woven into the fabric of Big Cherry.
Alána Rader directs an ensemble cast that includes Ryan Adair as Mr. Peel, Stacey Stauffer as Ms. Johnson, Art Keen as the mayor, Robert Barnard as Mr. Blake, Steven Coe as Mr. Breeding, Daniel Sabiston as Mr. Hanratty, Jesse Stauffer as Mr. Assalone), Donna Richman as Ms. Innes, Abby Seeley as Ms. Matz, Rick Sebastian as Mr. Oldfield, and TJ Albertson as Mr. Carp, with a set designed by Johnathan Johnson and costumes by Britanee Clark.
Rader is a theater maker based in Brooklyn, New York who grew up in rural Pennsylvania. An actor, writer and director, Rader is working toward obtaining a master’s degree through the University of Idaho. That’s where she became acquainted with Lab Theater founder and former Producing Artistic Director Annette Trossbach.
“She’s also in my program. We met through class and started chatting and she asked if I wanted to direct ‘The Minutes.’”
To prepare for the show, Raider watched several town council meetings on YouTube to get a feel for the vibe.
“I read an interview with Tracy Letts, and he said that he watched and listened to hundreds of hours of town council meetings. He said some of it was very boring and mundane, but some of it gave him a lot of inspiration for the play.”
Rader’s experience in Fort Myers has been inspirational as well.
“I’ve been able to connect with a couple of other theaters in town,” said Rader. “I saw a play over at Players Circle, ‘Flatlanders,’ and I also saw ‘Shout! The Musical’ at Florida Rep, so that was really fun to connect with other local theater makers, and everyone at the Lab has been so supportive and really kind. I’ve had a great experience. I hope to come back.”
Radar has some advice for people who go to a performance.
“Come in with an open mind and be prepared to be surprised,” said Radar, “Make sure you turn up your listening ears because Letts is a wordy writer and there’s a lot of clever humor embedded in the text. There’s lots of twists and turns to the plot, and the ending is kind of intentionally nebulous, which I think is really fun because the audience can leave and discuss the play and decides for themselves what they think happened.”
Ryan Adair plays Mr. Peel, who is not only new to the Big Cherry town council, but also a new parent.
“What’s unique about the show is that the audience sees everything from his perspective,” Adair noted. “It’s a 90-minute show that’s told in a linear fashion and the audience kind of discovers the mysteries of the council and their hidden secrets and some of the things that unravel during the show through Mr. Peel’s perspective. Tracy Letts wrote it in a way that the audience is with Peel the entire time and they’re learning things as he learns things.”
This is the second of Letts’ plays that Adair has been in. He previously appeared in “Killer Joe” at the Lab.
““Killer Joe’ was my first show at the Lab and it was a wild, wild show. This is very different from that.”
Adair is a huge fan of Tracy Letts.
“He just writes very real,” said Adair. “He writes in conversation. His writing is very brilliant. He actually scripts “uhs” and “ums” and where to draw out a word. That’s very unique in a playwright, and he does that very purposely. Getting to do another show that he wrote is exciting to me, and a very different show than ‘Killer Joe.’”
Although described as a searing satire with notes of mystery and magical realism, “The Minutes” is also a dark comedy.
“It’s a very funny script,” Adair observed. “It’s subtle. It’s not bang-me-over-the-head, ‘Lend Me A Tenor’ funny or ‘Noises Off’ funny. Very witty and dry. I have kind of a dry sense of humor and I appreciate that.”
Adair is excited to be in the play’s Southwest Florida premiere.
“It’s not a well-known show. It was on Broadway only a couple of years ago and premiered at Steppenwolf Theater. The company brought it to New York and it was a pretty good hit in New York and was nominated for a Pulitzer and a Tony. So it’s exciting to be able to bring a show of that caliber to Southwest Florida and the Gulf Coast.”
Spoiler alert!
Everything that follows runs the risk of giving away the ending. So readers may wish to review what follows after they have seen the show.
“The Minutes” explores the depths to which people will go to rewrite their history and maintain their status and place in the world, all set in a city council meeting that goes wildly off the rails.
This gripping and thought-provoking comedy goes well beyond small-town politics and real-world power to expose the ugliness behind some of our most closely held American narratives while asking each of us what we would do to keep from becoming history’s losers.
In “The Minutes,” history’s losers are the Indigenous tribe that once occupied the region in and around Big Cherry. But the outcome of “The Minutes” can easily apply to this country’s relationship with the African people that were brought to our shores six hundred years ago and held hostage since the late 1600s.
In “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” Isabel Wilkerson writes, “Americans are loath to talk about enslavement in part because what little we know about it goes against our perception of our country as a just and enlightened nation, a beacon of democracy for the world. Slavery is commonly dismissed as a ‘sad, dark chapter’ in the country’s history. It is as if the greater the distance we can create between slavery and ourselves, the better to stave off the guilt or shame it induces. But in the same way that individuals cannot move forward, become whole and healthy unless they examine the domestic violence they witnessed as children or the alcoholism that runs in their family, the country cannot become whole until it confronts what was not a chapter in its history, but the basis of its economic and social order.”
Compare that to Alana Rader’s director’s note for “The Minutes.”
“Healing only becomes possible when we confront the ugliness of our own truths and the history behind them. ‘The Minutes’ is a biting satire which takes place during what appears to be a dull town council meeting. The playwright, Tracy Letts, expertly attacks the mythology of American history; uprooting people’s relationship with the truth and how they revise this “truth” for their own comfort. ‘The Minutes’ serves as an allegory for America, much like Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible.’ I’m excited to tackle this powerful piece with The Lab and I hope audiences leave challenged to do better and examine ways they might be bystanders in their own lives.”
Viewed from this vantage, “The Minutes” sheds new light and perspective on recent efforts to attack “Critical Race Theory” and expunge references to enslavement and related topics that might make some feel discomfort.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.