"Ultimately, I came to feel that if it is the theater’s main business to mirror who we are — to act, like the minutes of a meeting, as an absolute record of what we say and how we behave — then “The Minutes” does what a play aimed mostly at white people must. It shows us how we are starting to understand, but still mostly failing to accept, that our privileges are tied to a history of denying them to others. "
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"In its revealing quarter-hour, the play is packaged to provoke and get you buzzing just like that electrical grid. Some may count what 'The Minutes' has up its sleeve as worthy of an OMG. Others – myself included – might mutter, 'Oh, brother.'"
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"Letts has important issues on his mind, so I’m sorry I couldn’t follow him as he goes more fully into them. As he did in 'August: Osage County,' he wants to deal with the state’s foundational sin — the wholesale slaughter of Native Americans. In that play, the house (synecdoche for the country) has a literal Indian in the attic, and the housekeeper character Johnna only reminds and presides. But in 'The Minutes,' Letts isn’t content simply to point at history: He wants to impart its horror. This tonal shift requires a huge stylistic swing, and 'The Minutes' — so fine and deft and wicked for its first 60 minutes — can’t take it."
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"It raises abiding questions both topical and troubling. What to do when accepted history is called into question, and cherished myths about the past are shown to be, well, precisely that—more wishful fiction than complex and potentially disturbing fact? And who bears the wounds when uncomfortable truths are swept under the carpet, and who reaps the spoils?"
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"It’s also fair to see, without giving away a truly disturbing ending, that 'The Minutes' lifts itself from a satire of mundane corruption and small-town secrecy to something like an indictment of the very notion of America’s self-perception. The lightning flashes and booms of thunder that occur throughout the play – the lighting design is by Brian MacDevitt, sound design and original music by André Pluess – serve to illuminate and disguise, as needed, lending 'The Minutes' an unsettling, eerie and ominous mood from the get-go."
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"'The Minutes' is both a political comedy and a wicked, methodically plotted horror show, not unlike American democracy and its original sins. The play’s razor-sharp edge is all the more cutting for being polished with easy wit, like tickling a captive before releasing the guillotine."
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"I suspect that Letts's heart is in the right place, and that he is honestly interested in telling an important truth from a Broadway stage: This is a country built on top of conquered lands formerly occupied by the victims of bloodiest and most sustained genocide in recorded history. Nothing can ever undo that, and replacing the Pledge of Allegiance with a land acknowledgement is a poor form of reparations."
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Even given its considerable sting, The Minutes is, I think, a minor Letts work, lacking the epic family dysfunctions of August: Osage County or the richly developed characters of Linda Vista. But there's little doubt that when it comes to presenting a clarifying vision of our confused and fractious present, he has few, if any, peers. Here, he offers a warning to keep you up at night: The myths by which we live are a powerful source of meaning; they also kill.
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