Tracy Letts’s “The Minutes” excels at skewering institutional power and exposing the tribalism that enables it. The cutting satire, a 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist and 2022 Tony nominee, revels in the dizzying decorum that keeps much of anything from getting done in small-town government. But it’s clear that Letts has more on his mind. Moral betrayals. Truth-quashing indiscretions. Cultlike devotion. Brazen whitewashing.
By the time you realize you’re actually witnessing surrealist horror in the Keegan Theatre’s blistering D.C. premiere, there’s no doubt that the call is coming from inside the house. What a time and place for a sobering commentary on how power can corrupt the innocent and protect the guilty.
Centered on a city council meeting in the indistinct town of Big Cherry, USA, “The Minutes” at times feels ripped from D.C. headlines. The proposal to host a mixed martial arts extravaganza called “Lincoln Smackdown” reads like parody that, amid plans for such an event on the White House lawn, manifested itself into existence. The play’s talk of erecting an unnecessarily lavish monument also strikes an uncanny chord amid current conversations around a certain triumphal arch.
The prescience stresses the incisiveness of Letts’s text, sharply shepherded by director Susan Marie Rhea and a top-notch cast. Stephen Russell Murray exudes everyman charm as Mr. Peel, a wet-behind-the-ears council member trying to discover what unfolded when he missed the previous week’s meeting. (The minutes from that gathering are missing, and one council member’s seat is suddenly empty — until, in a clever coup of structure and staging, it isn’t.) Ray Ficca daunts as the two-faced mayor. Theo Hadjimichael and Zach Brewster-Geisz are sufficiently sketchy as a couple of steamrolling council members. Timothy H. Lynch wins many a laugh as a cantankerous council veteran of questionable lucidity.
Then there’s Valerie Adams Rigsbee’s dutiful clerk, who emphasizes the stakes when information that could upend the community’s collective identity comes to light. “We live here,” she pleads. “This is where we live.” In a city uniquely shaped by the powers that be, the line stings with uneasy recognition.
The Minutes Through May 3 at Keegan Theatre, 1742 Church St. NW. About 1 hour 30 minutes. keegantheatre.com.
Here’s a roundup of four more shows on D.C.-area stages:
‘A Streetcar Named Desire’
Let’s briefly disregard the dramaturgic appeal of mounting “A Streetcar Named Desire” at Dupont Underground — yes, a literal abandoned streetcar tunnel — and consider the other merits of director Nick Westrate’s stripped-to-the-bone staging.
There’s the raw, ravishing star turn from Lucy Owen, who created this traveling production with Westrate. As Blanche DuBois, the Southern belle seeking refuge with her sister and brother-in-law, Owen never loses sight of the pain behind her tormented heroine’s eyes. Mallory Portnoy’s conflicted Stella, Brad Koed’s ferocious Stanley, Will Rogers’s sensitive Mitch (one of his many characters) — the performances are assured across the board.
The minimalist four-actor approach does benefit from a healthy familiarity with Tennessee Williams’s text. But those words have a nice ring in the bowels of Dupont Circle, where Stanley’s “Stella!” clangs against the tiled walls, Blanche’s shower singing eerily echoes and the intimacy only exacerbates the sweaty claustrophobia. When Blanche traces the tracks and a blinding headlight suggests an incoming train, the imagery couldn’t be more evocative.
How could one possibly elevate Williams’s masterpiece? By going underground, it turns out.
A Streetcar Named Desire Through May 4 at Dupont Underground, 19 Dupont Cir. NW. About 2 hours 45 minutes. thestreetcarproject.com.
‘A Good Day to Me Not to You’
Solo shows are running rampant nowadays, as the pandemic’s aftershocks reverberate and art born out of those conditions — socially distanced and budget-conscious — endures. But these endeavors too often fail to answer a foundational question: Why, exactly, should this story be told by one performer?
“A Good Day to Me Not to You,” now at Arena Stage’s Kogod Cradle, doesn’t offer a satisfactory answer. Playwright Lameece Issaq, who performed the show’s 2023 off-Broadway premiere before passing the reins to Constance Zaytoun, has penned a vulnerable exploration of grief, fertility, purpose and rebirth. Lee Sunday Evans’s taut direction, Mextly Couzin’s savvy lighting and Zaytoun’s committed performance lift the material.
Yet the story itself — a 40-something dental lab tech loses her sister, her job and her apartment before moving into an Upper West Side convent — feels like a scattered assortment of traumas and eccentricities in search of a narrative. And try as Zaytoun might, the decision to tell this tale via exhausting scene changes and character shifts only distracts from its devastation. Our protagonist may embrace her independence, but there’s no need for Zaytoun to go it alone.
A Good Day to Me Not to You Through May 3 at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St. SW. About 1 hour 25 minutes. arenastage.org.
‘Dragon Play’
Will “Dragon Play” ever take flight or get grounded by ambiguity? That question came to mind as I watched Rorschach Theatre’s intimate staging of Jenny Connell Davis’s fanciful 2012 elegy, mounted at the Stacks in Buzzard Point. As parallel plots unfold — a boy befriends a winged beast in one, and an old flame drops in on a married couple in the other — questions are inevitable. How are these characters connected? Are the otherworldly flourishes literal or allegorical? What’s it like when dragons climax? (Yes, that’s an actual point of conversation.)
Although the budget limitations of this Randy Baker-directed production slightly undercut the play’s fantastical ambition, Davis’s script ultimately delivers. As the lore comes into focus and revelations soar with satisfaction, “Dragon Play” mediates on the experiences — the growing pains, the loves, the sacrifices — that shape us. No dragons are slain, but demons are certainly exorcised.
Dragon Play Through May 17 at Rorschach Theatre, 101 V St. SW. About 1 hour 20 minutes. rorschachtheatre.com.
‘Caesar and Cleopatra’
Props to Bill Largess, Washington Stage Guild’s artistic director, for attempting to streamline George Bernard Shaw’s unwieldy “Caesar and Cleopatra” into something palatable. In casting the esteemed Craig Wallace and the enticing Hannah Taylor, he found convincing leads for this anti-romantic imagining of how Caesar’s ruthless pragmatism shaped Cleopatra into a Machiavellian queen.
But for all the effort to propel the 1898 play, this staging is still aimless and inert. Much of the blame goes to Shaw: Filled with clumsy contrivances, wink-and-a-nod dialogue and tell-not-show messiness, this fictionalized account is not the Irish playwright’s finest work. Based on some of the stilted performances, the piece isn’t pulling the best out of its cast, either. Perhaps some texts are best left on a dusty shelf.
Caesar and Cleopatra Through May 3 at Washington Stage Guild, 900 Massachusetts Ave. NW. About 2 hours. stageguild.org.
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