It’s been a cultural weekend. Yesterday I attended a piano recital; this afternoon I attended a production of Tracy Lett’s play, “The Minutes.” Both were well done, but the former was about melting into the music while the latter was about jarring your beliefs.
“The Minutes,” written by Letts during the 2016 presidential election, is (per the internet) “a satire of small-town bureaucracy that grows progressively darker as it careens toward a frenzied finale.” Various websites call it a comedy. I disagree.
Here is a synopsis of the story from www.broadway.com. I couldn’t have written anything better, so I’m deferring to someone else.
The Minutes, the record-breaking hit production from Steppenwolf Theatre Company, takes a hard look at the inner workings of a city council meeting and the hypocrisy, greed, and ambition that bubble to the surface when a newcomer to the small town of Big Cherry starts to ask the wrong questions.
Why is someone on the council mysteriously missing? What happened to all those bicycles? Is there skullduggery afoot with the city’s finances? What’s the deal with the available parking space? What the F is going on with the Lincoln Smackdown? And why are the minutes from the last meeting being kept secret?
Part Parks & Recreation, part Twilight Zone, this powerful, resonant, and funny portrayal of democracy in action proves that everything you know can change—it’s just a matter of minutes.”
Today was the last performance of the production at the Ghostlight Theatre in Benton Harbor, so I can’t encourage you to see it there. Still, I encourage you to see it or read about it or somehow learn its message. It could stand you in good stead in the 2024 presidential election.
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