REVIEW: The Laramie Project - Hope Street Theatre, Liverpool.

The Laramie Project is being performed at The Hope Street Theatre in Liverpool, which has approximately 100 seat capacity and is situated in one of the back rooms at The Masonic Building. It’s a lovely building, full of character and great architecture. The theatre is available to professional and no-professional theatre companies. The theatre is extremely adaptable for productions as the staging and seating can be arranged to incorporate any play layout. The theatre has since become a community hub for local writer groups and Open Mic nights.

The Laramie Project was written by Moises Kaufman, and recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. The play was directed primarily by Thomas Martin and assisted by Chris Hird. There was some great character interaction throughout the play and a cleverly paced nice build-up to the climax of the story. Dedication and hard work was strongly demonstrated in the show. It’s such a complex play to direct as there are several characters and scenes in the play.

The play is set in Laramie, which is a remote town in Wyoming in America. It’s a prime example of verbatim theatre, which draws on hundreds of interviews with inhabitants of the town, company members' own journal entries and published news reports. The play is divided into three acts and eight actors portray more than sixty characters in a series of short scenes.

The play centred around a young gay man, Matthew Shepard, who was tied to a fence in the hills outside Laramie, Wycoming. Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson subsequently robbed, savagely beat and severely tortured him and he was left to die in an act of hate that absolutely shocked the nation and the world. He was discovered 18 hours later by a passing traveller. Immediately rushed to the local hospital, where he was put on a life-support machine. He suffered an agonising death and passed away 6 days later.

Matthew Shepard became a national symbol of innocence, but for the people of Laramie, this horrendous murder was extremely personal to them. His murder brought them national and international attention, to hate crime legislation being discussed at state and federal levels in the United States. Many issues were covered in this production, but primarily the main ones were homophobic violence, prejudice, and discrimination. AIDS was explored briefly too.

The play did an excellent job demonstrating how two very different communities, the New York actors, several of whom were gay themselves and the Laramie townsfolk, who struggled to reconcile themselves with the barbaric murder of Matthew. This inevitably had an incredible effect on them as their religion disapproved of homosexuality. However, this conflicted their culture and created a new profound deep emotion.

There was a strong ensemble of eight actors, which included Mycroft Milverton, Christine Corser, Benjamin Keith, Faye Draper, Jess Bayley, Thomas Martin, Jen Morris and Chris Hird, some played several roles in the play too. The acting was really good, there was so much emotion displayed from all the actors. The interaction between the characters was thought provoking and created an intense atmosphere. Well done to everyone for protraying all the characters, I could instantly identify a different one, although played by the same actor. Each gave so much raw emotion and compassion to their roles. The accents were really good too, though a few grew stronger as the play progressed.

 A great idea was having a square stage and the audience sitting around. All angles were covered and the audience could see everything, regardless of where they were sitting. The stage was utilised incredibly well and to the full potential of the theatre nd this play.

This play was one of most captivating and encompassing pieces of contemporary theatre I have seen. It was stunningly put together and a highly effective production. It’s essentially a very sad play that touches your every emotion, yet I found the play incredibly moving and highly emotional. The play illustrated the lowest depths of hatred, then the greatest heights of compassion of the same people in the same community.

The set design was simple, but very effective. It was the narrative of the story that was significant here and getting that over to the audience, which was done so well. There were a few props, but only visible, if the character needed it. The scene changes were smooth and effective.

A Bridge Over Troubled Water was performed initially by Benjamin, then the other actors joined in singing the timeless classic on the stage in the play. It was beautifully sung by all and towards the end of song, the grief and raw emotion could be heard in the characters voice, when she is laying a candle at the Vigil. The vocals were really good and an excellent choice of song selected. This particular scene was saturated in emotion and extremely moving to watch.

I would highly recommend you see this magnificent piece of contemporary theatre, which was so emotional and heartfelt throughout. Overall, I thought the whole production was excellent. Well done to everyone involved for bringing this heartbreaking story to the stage.

Reviewer - Mark Cooper
on - 22/4/19