In 1998 Laramie, a small town in Wyoming was the scene of the brutal homophobic attack of Matthew Shepard, a university student and popular member of the community.  He was beaten and left crucified on a fence to die.  He was found 18 hours later and as he fought for his life the world media gathered, large communities throughout America held candlelit vigils and hate crime had a worldwide focus.  A few months after Shepard’s death, The Tectonic Theatre Company visited the town interviewing his friends, family and members of the local community.  They used the hundreds of hours of transcripts from these conversations to create The Laramie Project, a powerful and disturbing piece of Verbatim Theatre documenting a town trying to come to terms with it’s horrific past.

Theatre Omnibus’s production of The Laramie Project at Sweet ECA is filled with emotional and passionate accounts of the incidents surrounding the attack. Simply staged and directed they allow the terrifying text to speak for itself.  The show itself is somewhat varied in the quality of its performances.  It started fairly shakily though one wasn’t sure if this was due to nerves of a huge cast playing to a tiny audience in a large venue or merely down to the performers themselves.  Regardless, the production recovered very quickly with sterling performances being delivered by Marilyn Wales as the Doctor who dealt with Shepard’s injuries, Ben Fialkov as the local minister dealing with the prejudice of a community and Kristin Price as Matthew Shepard’s friend who instigates the Action Angels (a group of people dressed as Angels with huge wingspans to block out the shouting of the bigoted protestors at the murder trial).

Overall, this production would work on the merit of the writing alone and as such can guarantee an emotional rollercoaster for anyone hearing the testimonies of the community for anyone with even the slightest bit of humanity. 

Sweet ECA, Edinburgh College of Art
August 5-12: 17:10 (1hr 15mins) £7.00 (£6.00)