REVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
As presented by Stray Cat Theatre as its 23rd season opener, THE MINUTES, a blistering satire of small-town city council meetings, begins as one thing and concludes as something completely different. And no matter what clues or giveaways you think you might have picked up on throughout the play, you won't be prepared for the emotional wallop that will eventually come. And you may not fully recover from its uncomfortable implications, either.
The characters who gather each week at the council meeting are a mixed bag of small-town types, each with well-defined though often broadly comical characteristics, and some with curiously odd names.
As the play progresses and the city council continues its seemingly mundane business of discussing the issue of some missing bikes and whatever else is included on this week’s council agenda, the mystery of last week’s minutes and the truth behind the absence of Mr. Carp (CJ Mascarelli, seen in a shocking flashback) is slowly revealed, and it’s a punch to the gut. More importantly, what the young Mr. Peele discovers and how he eventually reacts to it has very little to do with the truth or how past events are perceived, but everything to do with survival, maintaining power, and what delusions we are willing to embrace in order to preserve a way of life.
And, yes, even though the first draft of writer Tracy Letts's script was almost completed before Trump's 2016 victory, he was never writing about Trump. The former president's name is never even mentioned. Yet, the theme of alternate facts, blazing lies, and the distortion of what is and what should never be known, controlled solely by the winners, makes Stray Cat Theatre’s production of THE MINUTES a powerfully sobering indictment of what we’re willing to ignore and what we’re willing to embrace in order to make our lives as comfortable for ourselves as possible.