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Jessie Mueller and Armie Hammer
Jessie Mueller and Armie Hammer

Tracy Letts’ The Minutes to Make Broadway Premiere

Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning playwright Tracy Letts will see, not one, but two of his plays play on Broadway this season. His Linda Vista is currently playing at Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre, produced by the Second Stage Theatre Company via Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company. That production concludes its run, directed by Dexter Bullard, on November 10, 2019. Now we have news that Lett’s play The Minutes will make its Broadway premiere late this winter, beginning previews on February 25, 2020, at the Cort Theatre toward a March 15 opening.

Letts will also star in the production, joined onstage by Ian Barford (Linda VistaAugust: Osage County), Tony Award winner Blair Brown (The Parisian Woman, Copenhagen), Cliff Chamberlain (Superior Donuts, Homeland), Tony Award nominee K. Todd Freeman (Airline Highway, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Golden Globe nominee Armie Hammer (Call Me By Your Name, Straight White Men), Danny McCarthy (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Iceman Cometh), Tony Award winner Jessie Mueller (Waitress, Beautiful), Sally Murphy (Linda Vista, August: Osage County), Tony Award nominee Austin Pendleton (Choir BoyThe Diary of Anne Frank), Jeff Still (To Kill a Mockingbird, Oslo).

The Minutes was initially announced for a summer run in 2018, with direction by Anna D. Shapiro, but that production was postponed. Shapiro is again at the helm for this newly announced opening. This will reunite her with playwright Letts, Shapiro having directed the Broadway production of the Tony-winning August: Osage County. The Minutes is currently playing at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

The Minutes is described as a comedy about politics in a small town. Backstabbing, misinformation, manipulation, and the ridiculous hijinks we’ve come to associate with all things political is explored and eviscerated in Lett’s play. The small town of Big Cherry holds a town meeting and nothing will be quite the same after everyone has their say.

Playwright Letts won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his haunting family drama August: Osage County (2007). The play also won the Tony Award for Best Play. His other plays to grace the Broadway stage include Superior Donuts (2009) and Linda Vista (2019). As an actor, Letts won a Tony Award for the 2012 revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Last season, he starred opposite Annette Bening in a revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. He also starred in the 2014 production of Will Eno’s The Realistic Joneses. Film credits include The Post and Lady Bird.

The creative team for The Minutes will be announced at a later date.

Mark Robinson is the author of the two-volume encyclopedia The World of Musicals, The Disney Song Encyclopedia, and The Encyclopedia of Television Theme Songs. His latest book, Sitcommentary: The Television Comedies That Changed America, released on October 15. He maintains a theater and entertainment blog at markrobinsonwrites.com.

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