Steppenwolf’s Broadway production of Tracy Letts’ The Minutes is exiting the Cort Theatre, its pre-COVID home, with plans to re-open in 2022 at another Broadway venue.
The move signals yet another way the pandemic shutdown has impacted Broadway’s shuffle of theater tenants and reopening schedules.
The Minutes, a political comedy directed by Anna D. Shapiro and starring Ian Barford, Blair Brown, Cliff Chamberlain, K. Todd Freeman, Armie Hammer, Tracy Letts, Danny McCarthy, Jessie Mueller, Sally Murphy, Austin Pendleton, and Jeff Still, began previews at the Shubert Organization’s Cort Theatre on Feb. 25, 2020. It’s planned opening date of March 15, 2020, was scuttled when all of Broadway went dark just three days prior due to COVID-19.
As with most other suspended productions early in the pandemic months, The Minutes had initially hoped to reopen at its original home venue. Had the shutdown not occurred, The Minutes was set to play at the Cort through July 19, 2020.
The production now is set to begin loading out its sets from the Cort today to make way for a previously planned renovation of the venue and construction at an adjacent property.
“The Shubert Organization had graciously allowed us to extend past our initial announced limited engagement (July 19, 2020) to the fall,” noted the producing team led by Jeffrey Richards, “and we intend to reopen the production, pending cast and theatre availability, on Broadway on Tuesday, March 15, 2022, exactly two years after our original opening date of Sunday, March 15, 2020.”
Producers notes that, as of now, the creative team remains intact, and that they’re hopeful they will be able to also maintain the existing cast when the play opens in 2020.
Additional details will be announced in the coming months.
The Minutes chronicles the inner workings of a city council meeting and the hypocrisy, greed and ambition that bubble to the surface when a newcomer to the small town of Big Cherry starts to ask the wrong questions: Why is someone on the council mysteriously missing? Why are the minutes from the last meeting being kept secret?
A Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2018, Steppenwolf’s The Minutes received critical praise for its 2017 Chicago engagement, with the Chicago Tribune describing it as “part Parks & Recreation, part Twilight Zone.”
The Broadway producing team is led by Jeffrey Richards, Rebecca Gold, Carl Moellenberg, Spencer Ross, Louise Gund with Jayne Baron Sherman, Elizabeth Armstrong, Blakeman Entertainment, HornosBerger, Across the River Productions, Stewart F. Lane/Bonnie Comley/Leah Lane, Kathleen K. Johnson, Emily Dobbs, Robert Flicker, Jacob Soroken Porter, and The Shubert Organization.