Stage Door Review: Christopher Hoile

Read the review on the Stage Door website

Theatre Aezir’s fine production is one that people should rush to see.

Theatre Aezir has certainly scored a major coup. The small professional theatre company based in London, Ontario, is currently presenting the Canadian premiere of The Minutes by Tracy Letts, the American author best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County (2007). The play speaks to the present post-election anxiety felt in the US and Canada so clearly that it is hard to believe the play was written in 2017. “Democracy is messy”, says one of Letts’s characters, and we see how true that is, especially when it is founded on a lie. Under the direction of Mike Semple, the large cast bring home both the comedy of small-town politics and the not-so-comic aspects of entrenched power.

The action takes place in real time in the council chamber of the small town of Big Cherry somewhere in the upper midwestern US. Theatre Aezir producer Elizabeth Durand said she had hoped to present the play in one of the council-like chambers in London, but none of the potential venues agreed. Undaunted, the company had John Beverley build shared councillor desks in the basement of the First Baptist Church which, with all the surrounding wood, are quite handsome.

The plot concerns the return to the council of Mr. Peel, husband to a Big Cherry native though not one himself. He has missed the past week’s meeting on October 25th because of his mother’s death. On his return he is perplexed to find that one of the councillors, Mr. Carp, is missing and is said no longer to be part of the council. What is especially disturbing is that none of the councillors will tell him what exactly transpired at the October 25th meeting that led to Mr. Carp being “terminated” as councillor.

Further deepening the mystery, there are no minutes for the October 25th meeting. Council clerk Ms. Johnson was present and did take them down, but, unusually for her, she has not yet copied or distributed them. Every attempt by Mr. Peel to find out what happened on October 25th is shot down, sidelined or ignored until Mr. Peel resentfully gives up.

The meeting proceeds after delays caused by its two oldest members to a proposal by Mr. Hanratty to make the city fountain fully accessible. (Hanratty’s sister requires use of a wheelchair.) Hanratty proposes a simple plan using either a plank to make a ramp up the stairs surrounding the fountain or a more extreme plan in which the fountain will be demolished and rebuilt without stairs. The designer for the fountain has envisaged its central pillar surmounted with an equestrian statue of Sergeant Otto Pym, the hero of the Battle of Mackie Creek in 1872, the main event in Big Cherry’s history.

The trouble is that when Peel hears that Hanratty’s proposal was discussed at the October 25th meeting as well as Mr. Blake’s proposal for a “Lincoln Smackdown” entertainment at the Fair and plans made for the use for stolen bicycles recovered by the city, Peel naturally wonders what could be so secret about the minutes from that meeting that they have not been copied and handed out.

Mr. Peel, not having grown up in Big Cherry, knows nothing about Otto Pym or the battle, so the councillors proceed to re-enact it for him. It turns out Big Cherry children have learned about the town’s history in Sunday school where they also frequently re-enacted the story. This story of the founding of Big Cherry tells how a farmer named Farmer and his family were attacked by marauding Sioux Indians who burned down Farmer’s barn and kidnapped his daughter Debbie. US Sergeant Otto Pym came to the rescue, rode into dangerous Sioux territory and returned to the Farmers with little Debbie saying, “Here is your future” just before he died with three arrows imbedded in his back.

“Here is your future” has become the town motto of Big Cherry and the date of the battle, November 29, 1872, is commemorated as the founding of Big Cherry and the occasion for the Big Cherry Heritage Fair, the most important date of the municipal calendar. It’s no wonder the other councillors ridicule Peel for not knowing the town’s history.

For the first two-thirds of The Minutes, Letts combines the mystery of the missing minutes and of Mr. Carp’s disappearance with an hilarious satire of local politics and the typical behaviour of people at any kind of meeting. Some councillors like Ms. Matz are so involved in her own issues that she has no idea what is going on. Others like Ms. Innes and Mr. Oldfield have attended so many council meetings that whatever happens seems to wash over them. Still others like Mr. Hanratty and Mr. Blake have projects they what to pursue, but others like Mr. Breeding is simply a bully who wants to suppress comment.

Once Peel finds a means of forcing Ms. Johnson to read the minutes from October 25th, the mood of the play takes a radical shift away from comedy to one of utmost seriousness. The final scene of the play is frightening.

Director Mike Semple has masterfully managed the creation of these moods and the transitions between them. He also generates increasing tension about the mystery of the missing minutes and missing councillor even through the long comedic section that begins the play. The well-chosen cast, despite differences in acting style, work closely together as an ensemble.

While everyone does a good job, one actor particularly stands out. One is Tyler Lionel Parr as Mr. Peel. Peel is the new man in the council and the new man in town and the others never fail to remind him of the fact. Parr shows how Peel takes these jabs in his stride even though we see that they become increasingly irksome to him. Parr shows us that Peel sees through the stalling and prevarications of the others early on but does not quite know how to choose the right moment to force a revelation. When that moment finally comes, Parr has Peel triumph as a naïve young person might do, not knowing how terrible the revelation will actually be. Letts’s Mr. Peel is not the calmly thought Juror #8 of Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men (1954), but rather a young man who is torn between wanting to belong in his new community and wanting to know the truth about that very community. It should be said that The Minutes is a much darker play than Twelve Angry Men because the councillors in the Minutes are not open to seeing things a new way even when presented with new facts. This difference shows how much political discourse in the US has changed for the worse between 1954 and 2017.

The other standout is Mike Wisniowski who plays Mr. Carp. I would have liked to keep this character’s presence a secret, but I also feel I have to congratulate Wisniowski on bringing such authority and passion to the role. Mr. Carp appears in a flashback to the fateful October 25th meeting where we see some of what happened that evening. Wisniowski beautifully demonstrates how an intelligent, inquisitive person is able to accommodate facts that contradict everything he previously believed and how, without malice, he tries to convince others of their truth.

Chris Bancroft gives a fine performance as Mayor Superba, who seems to suppress his anger only to stimulate more malign calculations. Tim Bourgard, Caroline Dolny Guerin and Charlene McNabb are very funny as Mr. Oldfield, Ms. Innes and Ms. Matz. McNabb as Matz builds a little wall around herself with all her bottle of pills and supplements, a visual sign of how her character is cut off from the world around her. One might say that all the characters have a wall around them that they are trying to protect during their interactions with others. Oldfield and Innes, both having served more than 30 years on the council, naturally fight against change. Bourgard and Guerin are excellent in showing how their characters have very distinct ways of manifesting their befuddlement.

The second-most naïve councillor is Mr. Hanratty, played as a highly-strung young man by William Foley. Foley combines the geeky aspects of Hanratty (the awkward use of a laser pointer in his presentation) with politically correct anger over the use of the word “handicapped” by suggesting “impaired” is somehow better. Mr. Hanratty’s main competitor for council funds is Mr. Blake, who favours a “Lincoln Smackdown” in which people pay to fight someone dressed as Abraham Lincoln in a cage. Demis Odanga plays Blake with such sang-froid and intelligence that we wonder how Blake could even have such an idea. He is the closest Peel has to a friend on the council but he is so politic that only gives Peel the most cryptic answers to his questions.

The noisiest councillor is Mr. Breeding. Josh Cotrell perfectly projects Breeding’s aggressive style which contrasts completely with Mayor Superba’s quiet strategizing. Muted but not at all reassuring are Ms. Johnson and Mr. Assalone. As the first Melissa Metler makes the council clerk seem just to be doing her job, but Johnson is just as agile in evading Peel’s questions as anyone else. As Assalone, Colin Legge gives us the impression of a shady character who is on council to look after his own interests.

During the prayer that opens the closed session of the council that we witness, Mayor Superba especially wants to remember the high school team, the Savages, who have done so well. That name, like so many other such names, pretends to honour the original inhabitants of the land while slurring them at the same time. When Peel is shown a reenactment of the great battle of Mackie Creek, he knows it is too facile to be true. He says it reminds him of a scene in John Ford’s great film The Searchers (1956). He forgets that Ford’s film is about how a bigot is compelled to change his mind when confronted with a truth, rather like Juror #10 in Twelve Angry Men.

The frightening aspect of The Minutes, something we all know too well from recent events, is that people no longer find facts and truth compelling. Belief and protecting vested interests are more important. In taking on this topic Letts’s play is eerily prescient. Theatre Aezir’s fine production is one that people should rush to see.

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