Entertainment

Letts' electrifying 'The Minutes' gets stellar premiere at Steppenwolf

Posted November 20, 2017 10:00 pm

Barbara Vitello

Mayor Superba (William Peterson), center, presides over a city council meeting flanked by his enforcers, Mr. Assalone (Jeff Still), left, and Mr. Breeding (Kevin Anderson) in Steppenwolf Theatre's premiere of “The Minutes” by Tracy Letts. Courtesy of Michael Brosilow

“The Minutes” - ★ ★ ★ ★

Imagine you're an upright, upstanding, stand-up standard-bearer living in a small town in flyover country.

Maybe you've got a family you want to protect. Maybe you have a cause - civil rights, the environment, fiscal responsibility - to advance. So you run for city council. You win. You go to work.

That's where “The Minutes,” by Tracy Letts, begins.

The electrifying, fiercely funny dramedy premiered Sunday at Steppenwolf Theatre under artistic director Anna D. Shapiro, whose superb production features a half dozen members of the Steppenwolf tribe.

The play, which already has a 2018 Broadway berth reserved, had me laughing for much of its 100 minutes. Its conclusion left me slack-jawed. In the best possible way.

City council members act out a battle between Sioux Indians and their town's Founding Fathers, while Mayor Superba (William Peterson), second from right, narrates the tale to newcomer Mr. Peel (Cliff Chamberlain), center, in Steppenwolf Theatre's "The Minutes." Courtesy of Michael Brosilow

Rooted in power, privilege and self-preservation, Letts' political but mostly nonpartisan (traces of Trumpism excepted) play takes place on a rainy, autumn night in the quiet burg of Big Cherry.

Presiding over the meeting, held in a city hall with classical pretensions, is “CSI” star William Petersen's smooth-as-silk Mayor Superba. Superba is a perfectly politic politician who keeps his cool, even when confronted by the apoplectic Mr. Carp (Ian Barford, who excels at playing flawed men hanging onto their tattered integrity).

Flanking Superba are his loyalist “fixers”: thuggish Mr. Assalone (Jeff Still), who's got a side hustle with his brother the sheriff, and the churlish Mr. Breeding (Gurnee native Kevin Anderson), who has no breeding whatsoever. (Names matter in this play. For the record, so do power surges and infestations.)

Ensemble member William Petersen (best known for his role on TV's "CSI") returns to Steppenwolf Theatre for the premiere of Tracy Letts' political dramedy "The Minutes." Courtesy of Michael Brosilow

Also on hand are longtime council members Ms. Innes (Penny Slusher), whose chief concern is the town's annual festival, and the comically irascible Mr. Oldfield (Francis Guinan, deftly delivering Letts' funniest lines). James Vincent Meredith serves up delicious word salads as Mr. Blake, whose proposed revenue generator “Lincoln Smackdown” has the earmarks of a reality TV series. Danny McCarthy is delightfully fidgety as the well-meaning Mr. Hanratty, whose proposal to make a city landmark more accessible for people with disabilities is interrupted when he's bitten by ants.

Sally Murphy plays the perpetually distracted Ms. Matz, who seems to have won her council seat by accident, and Cliff Chamberlain plays newcomer Mr. Peel, a pediatric dentist who developed a civic conscience after his toddler's birth. The only nonelected attendee is Ms. Johnson (a canny, cooly perceptive Brittany Burch), Big Cherry's competent city clerk.

James Vincent Meredith, left, and Cliff Chamberlain play city council members in Tracy Letts' political dramedy "The Minutes" premiering at Steppenwolf Theatre. Courtesy of Michael Brosilow

What starts as a run-of-the-mill meeting - with pols horse-trading votes for pet projects, quibbling over parking spaces and expressing support for the Savages, the town's winning high school football team - turns contentious when Peel requests the minutes from the previous meeting, which he missed to attend his mother's funeral.

To reveal more would spoil the play. Let's just say they tell a version of history that doesn't quite square with the heroic past Big Cherry has assigned itself. Like many of us, when confronted with facts that don't bear out the beliefs we cling to, Superba and his council must face a reckoning.

Or do they?

The ever-subtle, ever-intuitive Shapiro crafts some wonderful moments. Fleeting, tension-filled and loaded, those moments often consist of little more than a quick glance or a barely imperceptible gesture, whose meaning Shapiro's top-flight cast expertly conveys.

New council member and proud father Mr. Peel (Cliff Chamberlain) shows off his baby daughter to town clerk Ms. Johnson (Brittany Burch) in Steppenwolf Theatre's premiere of Tracy Letts' "The Minutes." Courtesy of Michael Brosilow

“The Minutes” is also quite funny, silly even. (The council members re-enacting a famous Big Cherry battle is a hoot.) But the questions Letts poses - what are you willing to do, what are you willing to ignore, what are you willing to forget to preserve your “cocoon of comfort”? - are provocative. And perennial.

And they demand answers.

Location: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St., Chicago, (312) 335-1650 or steppenwolf.org

Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; through Jan. 7. Also 2 p.m. Dec. 6, 13 and 20. No shows Nov. 23, Dec 24 and 25. No 7:30 p.m. shows Dec. 10, 17, 31 and Jan. 7.

Running time: About 100 minutes, no intermission

Tickets: $20-$105

Parking: $12 in the parking lot adjacent to the theater; limited street parking

Rating: For teens and older

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