The Laramie Project **** 1/2

‘The Laramie Project’ by Moises Kaufman is presented at PICA, Northbridge, by Be Active BSX Theatre at 8 pm until the 5^th April.

This is the recollections of the inhabitants of the American town of Laramie after Matt, a gay man of 21, was found tortured and beaten whilst tied to a fence. The story is constructed around the 200 interviews given by a large cross-section of the towns-people. It covers all shades of tolerance and intolerance, from the Evangelist minister who asks the congregation to pray for the boy ‘even though God has an agreement with the Devil for such people to be sent to Hell’. Some of the comments are trite; others are so narrow-minded and bigoted that the audience laughed in disbelief that even in late 1998 a population could still think that way.

Adam Mitchell’s direction is outstanding and the cast totally brilliant. There must be several dozen, very different characters, portrayed by the cast of eight. The accents were accurate and consistent and even the American mannerisms, intonations and expressions captured skilfully. The actors moved in and out of the set smoothly and rapidly in order to keep the pace up.

The set by Caitlin Ryan was necessarily uncomplicated (a simple cyclorama), with clever and complex lighting (Mike Nanning). The use of live, close-up video was used effectively, to help show emotion and depth of feeling.

This whole production was practically faultless, but the genre I found slightly tedious in the first act, but it picked up considerably in the second. When one has many individuals giving a paragraph each of their experiences in this town, with little dialogue (mainly short monologues), virtually no interaction of the characters, and minimal movement then despite the supreme efforts of all concerned my enjoyment factor was low. There were many audience members who were blown away by the story.

An extremely admirable and talented production.