Tracy Letts’ ‘The Minutes’ Sets Spring Broadway Plans

After a false start when it was originally announced for the 2017-18 season, Tracy Letts’ The Minutes will finally reach Broadway early next year.

A scathing comedy about small-town politics and real-world power viewed through the prism of a volatile local council meeting in the fictional burg of Big Cherry, the play premiered in fall 2017 in an acclaimed production at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company and was scheduled to make the jump to Broadway immediately after, shepherded by producer Scott Rudin. But those plans fell apart and have remained on hold until now.

Jeffrey Richards and Steve Traxler head the new producing team behind The Minutes, which was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Rudin is no longer attached to the production.

The play reunites Letts with director Anna D. Shapiro, who staged his Tony- and Pulitzer-winning 2007 Broadway smash, August: Osage County. Performances will begin in February; a theater, preview and opening dates, the full cast of 11 and design team are to be announced.

The arrival of The Minutes makes Letts the rare contemporary playwright to have two works produced on Broadway during the same season. His play Linda Vista, another dark comedy that originated at Steppenwolf, will bow in October at the Hayes Theatre, the Broadway home of Second Stage Theater. 

Director Dexter Bullard has reunited much of the original Chicago cast for the New York run. Ian Barford heads an ensemble that includes Sally Murphy, Caroline Neff, Cora Vander Broek and Troy West, with Chantal Thuy and Jim True-Frost joining the company.

Letts’ last play produced on Broadway was Superior Donuts in 2009, while Man From Nebraska and Mary Page Marlowe have more recently been seen in well-reviewed off-Broadway productions. A Tony-winning actor as well as a playwright, Letts currently is wrapping up his run in the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, starring opposite Annette Bening and Benjamin Walker.

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