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Wild Oats Productions and The Space present
The Laramie Project
Written by Moisés Kaufman
Directed by Joseph C. Walsh
The Space
11–13 Oct , 18–22 Nov 09
A review by Chad Armitstead for EXTRA! EXTRA!
“We need to own this. We are like this.” Joseph C. Walsh’s emotionally searing production asks us to listen to the citizens of Laramie and see ourselves. This show easily makes my top three of the year. The Laramie Project opens in London on the eve of the eleventh anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s kidnap, attack and death. Perhaps as appropriate as it is late, the US Congress finally acted this week on the uncomfortably clear mandate of The Laramie Project to ‘own this,’ passing the first anti-hate crime legislation. Moisés Kaufman’s The Laramie Project is a piece of verbatim theatre that chronicles the events and aftermath surrounding the brutal attack of gay university student Matthew Shepard. Moisés Kaufman and Tectonic Theater Project visited Laramie, Wyoming six times over two years and culled the story from over 200 interviews, press releases and other found texts. The genius of The Laramie Project is that it doesn’t simply overcome the boredom that slits the throat of so much verbatim theatre. It rivets and it moves. Without preaching. It trades the sanctimony of political theatre for the sincerity of rendering people in their own words. Kaufman makes a case for the importance of the writer in verbatim. Never relying on the interviews to write the story, there’s an intense understanding of narrative at play in the text. Immediately the protagonist is clear: Laramie. The character of Laramie takes three-dimensional form as each beat of its fight to cope emerges from the interviews. And not a word is wasted. The town’s struggle is compelling. At war with its conscience, Laramie tries to cope with or disavow its role in “growing” the perpetrators of the unthinkable crime. At times, Laramie’s citizens dig deep to truly learn and avoid the cowardly impulse to admit only what they can’t hide. But like all great protagonists, the town is flawed and falls short over and over again. Walsh’s show moves with an elegant precision. The director’s hand is evident throughout. Phone conversations are staged with actors standing across the stage from each other in darkened corners. Interviews happen in the middle of the stage and in peripheral recesses around it. Weaving the show into the audience, Walsh achieves the intimacy of a confessional. At the same time he makes guilt-ridden Laramie spring to life and bustle around us. Walsh and cast catch us in a wrenching emotional clockwork. Each actor hangs upon the other actor’s lines. Acknowledging the audience and asking us to act at times, the cast makes it clear that we the audience are part of the gears that drive the show. A true ensemble effort, the show’s most striking feature by far is the detail in the cast’s performances. Each actor embodies several citizens of Laramie and renders each in meticulous detail. Researching everything from accents to mannerisms, the cast doesn’t miss a joke buried in the obscurity of regional expression. I’m from a small town close to Laramie and similar in character. Seeing the cast and hearing the rhythms of speech, I had to remind myself I was in London and not at a church bake sale back home. Nothing feels imposed on the characters and nothing is contrived. There were no ill-conceived, poorly researched caricatures of the American west thrust onto the text. Both cast and director pay the writers and the people of Laramie the respect they deserve. They have listened to the characters, learning their individual speech patterns and allowed them to emerge from the page. This level of respect for the craft is the show’s trademark. It’s rare to find a cast that listens so intensely to each other. So it’s also rare to see a cast who reacts to each other in such a genuine way. This intensity gives an overwhelming importance to what is happening on stage. The effect is that, without preaching, the cast shows the audience their responsibility: to listen. See this show. Don’t be turned off because it’s an ‘issue’ play. Don’t avoid the show because you don’t want to be lectured. Don’t write it off as a depressing topic. It’s none of these things. It’s a play that lays humanity bare and infuses it with fervent hope. Laramie certainly shows us our darkness and the brutality that breeds there. But for all of their flaws, the citizens of Laramie also reflect our infinite capacity for compassion. They show us how far we will go to protect one of our own, and that being ‘one of our own’ has nothing to do with lifestyle.
11–13 October, 18–21 November 8pm Tickets: £10, £8 conc. Box office: 020 7515 7799 www.space.org.uk
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ary Couzens