The Minutes Preview Thread — Page 6

I saw this tonight and loved it. Did the Today Tix rush and got center orchestra row K, fantastic seats.

everythingtaboo said: "We saw the show last night and mostly enjoyed it.Six of the 11 characters at the performance were understudies, and by and large they were excellent. (Why the understudies aren't listed on the show's website is criminal, but I digress...) It really felt like a finely tuned machine, my hat goes off to them.

Also kudos to the set design. Looks to be the exact same dimensions at the Cort, and with the added black around it to fill out the larger proscenium, it only heightened the feeling that we were entering some murky territory.

Until the end, I found it to be a hilarious, insightful, look at the petty bull**** of humanity, and our fragile egos. That it it was riddled with such detailed inane nonsense heightened the "where is this going" tension, because I'm sure we'd be thinking the same thing sitting in that actual setting: "Oh great, another vote? Let's move this along!" I think Letts played with our impatience and used it to evoke angst and laughter, and that's when it was at it's strongest.

Like most we were stuck pondering the ending. I actually vaguely remembered the spoilers from this thread from pre-pandemic, and I can't decide if I would've liked to see the more extended original ending. I wonder if it would've put more of a period on the end of the sentence, you know?"

I’m sure it’s covered elsewhere in this thread. I vaguely recall reading some things had been cut from the ending. This was one of the last shows I saw pre-pandemic so I saw the original ending. Would you mind using the spoiler alert function and describing the current ending? I’ll be happy to do the same if you need a refresher on the original ending. For what it’s worth, the original ending didn’t entirely work for me either.

I finally saw this today and didn’t really care for it. It starts off mostly strong, with the traditional Letts examination of the inane banter we sometimes engage in as humans when there’s more going on under the surface. It finds some funny moments in the back-and-forth dialogue of the meeting (including a shortened redux of the meandering dinner prayer from August: Osage County) and some interesting tension in the mystery of “the minutes,” but it all starts to fall apart once the first shoe drops, and then completely loses itself when the other drops. It’s too slight a play to support it’s big ideas, and the absurdity of the real world has rendered its point a little toothless.

ErmengardeStopSniveling said: "Kinda shocked that this is continuing through its July 24 closing date based on the poor sales.


Why would you be shocked? It has a low weekly operating cost, they received SVOG money, and they have a landlord (the Roundabout) who is financially motivated to have something in the building rather than have it sit there empty.

nmartin said: "Can anyone tell me if Noah Reid, Tracy Letts, or Austin Pendleton have any scheduled/known absences for tomorrow, July 12?"

You should be fine. Doesn’t look like Noah Reid takes a lot of shows off

Georgeanddot2 said: "Saw this before lockdown with Hammibal the cannibal and the ending is extremely silly."

Saw this twice

The ending is great to me - after i saw it at the Cort I could not get it out of my head - the blood part is so smart (my very personal understanding of it):

1. in history, some settlers killed / mistreated the native Americans (metaphorically eat the flesh in raw, drink the blood and wipe out their populations)

2. and today, some of us are creating fake history to make themselves feel better - wiping out the meaning of historical event (history is a verb as Letts put, it changes constantly depending on who is interpreting it) - this is again reflected by the "drinking blood" part.



3. There is a more broad message in addition to the one regarding some certain historical events - going with the flow - follow the general public who may have misled by some ppl - " ARE YOU ONE OF US" - Letts

Updated On: 7/12/22 at 02:17 PM