James Kelly-
Taking place, rather appropriately during Trinity’s Rainbow Week, the Laramie Project is a multifaceted powerful study of attitudes towards homosexuality, and of how ‘small town’ attitudes can often be misrepresentative of people. The play, directed by David Doyle, is a dramatised version of a series of interviews taken by the Tectonic Theatre Company after the murder of one Matthew Shepherd, young gay man in Laramie, Wyoming in 1998. Minimal in the extreme, the strength of the Laramie Project lies in its eloquent, thought provoking script and in the strong performance by its ensemble.
The details of Matt’s horrific death are vague at the beginning, but slowly builds to a terrible crescendo and the full extent of the torture he endured is unveiled. Taking samples from interviews with the murderers themselves, both their and Matt’s families, the investigating police, one or two of Matt’s friends and a raft of Laramie locals, a comprehensive picture is built not only of Matt’s isolation in this small-town community, but the isolation commonly felt by a lot of gay men in the mid-West. This is compounded by the attitude still prevalent in the Nineties of AIDs. The belief that ‘he had it coming’ is taken to the extreme by Matt’s killers, but Laramie achieves its redemption in the form of a few informed souls. In many ways this is a story of redemption, of a community facing the bigotry it fostered in their children, of a town struggling to regain its reputation. For many of Laramie’s citizens, the whole incident is a chip on their shoulder and they remain defensive for much of the play but eventually they do accept not only the Theatre Company into their town, which had become an institution of Laramie life following the murder, but they accept a blame, a sense that this should not happen.
The fantastic script is given life by a talented six-strong cast, with each of the actors playing a variety of characters. In an ensemble it is so difficult to pick anyone who stands out, but two speeches stand out for me – the speech given by Matt’s father at the trial is incredibly emotive and Peter Corboy is incredibly affecting here, and secondly the quietly powerful Alex Greenfield as the boy who found Matt’s body was a highlight.
In parts moving and emotional, The Laramie Project is an intense experience scrutinising the attitudes of bigotry and the effects of isolation, while also providing a stirring account of people who redeem themselves by challenging their assumptions about the idea of a community.
