Anne Hearn and Brian Reddy to Star in THE MINUTES at the Springer Theatre

When Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-nominated mystery-comedy, The Minutes, opens at the Springer Theatre on April 11, it will feature a blue-ribbon cast with genuine Broadway and Hollywood pedigrees.

Audiences are asked to keep the surprise ending a secret so as not to spoil it for subsequent theatre patrons.

Tracy Letts is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County, for which he also won the Tony Award for Best Play. The Hollywood movie starred Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, and Benedict Cumberbatch. As an actor, Letts won the Tony Award for Best Actor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway.

The Minutes is Paul Pierce's directorial swan song following his recent retirement after 35 years as the Springer's producing artistic director. 

“For my final season, I was determined to direct this brilliant new masterwork by Tracy Letts. This is arguably the finest American play of the past sixty years. With this work, Letts does something that very few playwrights can do. He created something that could only exist in the theatre. It can never be a movie or a TV show,” Pierce said. “The Minutes is an immediate, visceral experience in which the actors and audience uncover a secret together - something that shakes them to their core. Although there is plenty of laughter and fun, the mystery that is revealed is a shocker audiences will never forget. I've never been more excited to direct a play and share it with our audience.”

Pierce has chosen a cast that is tailor-made for the unique requirements of a play with equal parts comedy, mystery, and suspense.

Audiences will easily recognize Brian Reddy as an actor from movies like Casino and O, Brother Where Art Thou? and from TV shows Seinfeld, House of Cards, and The X-Files. His Broadway credits include Finian's Rainbow, Dinner at Eight, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Scarlett Johansson. Reddy plays the role of Carp, who catapults the plot into orbit following a shocking revelation. Reddy has shared the silver screen with Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, George Clooney, Pierce Brosnan, Linda Hamilton, and Dustin Hoffman. He has been directed by Martin Scorsese, the Coen Brothers, Mike Nichols, and John Houseman, among others.

Ann Hearn made her mark early in her Hollywood career as the beloved Margaret Fouch in Evening Shade alongside Burt Reynolds, Hal Holbrook, Marilu Henner, Ossie Davis, and Michael Jeter. Hearn appeared with Jodie Foster in The Accused and with Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte in Lorenzo's Oil. She is a busy Los Angeles stage director, notably at Skylight Theatre, the Road Theatre Company in Hollywood, and Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills. Her most recent directorial work is the acclaimed premiere of Steve Yockey's hit, Mercury at the Road Theatre Company. In The Minutes, Hearn plays the headstrong grande dame Innes. Hearn is married to legendary Hollywood character actor Stephen Tobolowsky. 

Pierce's cast of Springer veterans also includes longtime collaborator Ned Bridges (A Tuna Christmas, The Play That Goes Wrong, Mother of Rain), Tim Abou-Nasr (Escape to Margaritaville, California Dreamin', Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat), David Millstone (Frost/Nixon), Isabella Minter (Evil Dead: The Musical, The Cake), Christian Becerra (Cabaret, Murder on the Orient Express), Marcus Johnson (The Bodyguard), Richard Daniel (Sweeney Todd, The Cake), Courtlyn Holt (Elvis: A Musical Revolution, Murder on the Orient Express) and Tate LeClair (Beauty and the Beast, The Play That Goes Wrong).

The Minutes is a theatrical reunion of sorts for Pierce, Reddy, Hearn, and Bridges. They were classmates and frequent castmates in the 1970s at the University of Georgia's Theatre Department.

The Minutes is an edge-of-your-seat suspense mystery set in the fictional town of Big Cherry. The action takes place at a typical American city council meeting with all of the small town pettiness, factions, and personality conflicts one might expect. But we eventually learn that every man, woman, and child in Big Cherry has been hiding a secret for 150 years, and the innocent young Mr. Peel - a recent transplant - stumbles onto the mystery by asking a straightforward question: “What happened at last week's council meeting?” His fellow councilors do everything they can to bury the truth until finally, Peel forces the answer. Big Cherry's mystery is astonishing and is guaranteed to shock every member of every audience. As Pierce puts it, “The finish is shocking because Big Cherry's secret is every town's secret.”

The Minutes is recommended for audiences 13 and up. 

The Minutes opens Thursday, April 11, and runs through April 21 in the Springer's McClure Theatre. For tickets, visit springeroperahouse.org or call 706-327-3688.

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