The stasis in Shapiro’s staging has a clear logic (how often does the seat of power shift?), and serves as stark contrast to isolated bursts of physical action. The ensemble of Steppenwolf and Broadway veterans, including Blair Brown, Sally Murphy and Ian Barford, play expertly off each other even as they mostly remain in their chairs. Count out the days, and you’ll realize the time is ripe for terror. Booming thunder and zappy brown-outs punctuate the stormy night (conveyed in the lighting design by Brian MacDevitt and in the sound and original music by André Pluess). The municipal meeting hall seems grander than it ought to be, with a soaring arched ceiling that betrays signs of water damage (in a set design by David Zinn). Shapiro, wryly signaling that “The Minutes” has a broader agenda. There’s a deliberateness to the foreboding in this Steppenwolf production from director Anna D. The mayor (Letts) would just as soon move on, and so would everyone else. Peel missed? It seems unlikely that the clerk who records them (Jessie Mueller), who is curt and fastidious, could be slacking. If each meeting includes a recap of the last, where are the minutes from the one Mr. The story’s deeper and sinister undercurrents creep along from the start, camouflaged in the tedium of process. (Fairy tales and rituals alike love an innocent orphan.) At the opposite end, the eldest statesman (Austin Pendleton) has been serving for 39 years, and could he please have a parking spot to show for it? Seven men (all but one of them white) and three women (also white) assemble for the quorum. Though he missed the previous week’s meeting to bury his mother, he’s sunny and eager and naive.
Peel ( Noah Reid of “Schitt’s Creek”) is the freshman of the group and something of a babe in the woods.
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