Photo by Tom Kochie

OPINION
Superb Portrait of a Tragedy
By Elise D'Haene
(1/29/2010)  Certain towns or areas become redefined by an incident that occurs within their borders, such as Columbine or Love Canal, the names entering the culture in a broader, more controversial context than merely defining a geographic point on a map.

Tom Kochie Allison-Rose DeTemple as Officer Reggie Fluty.

     As a character in "The Laramie Project," which opened last night at the Center Stage at the Southampton Cultural Center, says, "Now, after Matthew, I would say Laramie is a town defined by an accident, a crime. We've become Waco. . . . We're a noun, a definition, a sign."

     Shortly after the murder of a gay college student, Matthew Shepard, on Oct. 6, 1998, in that Wyoming town, Moises Kaufman, the director of the Tectonic Theater Project in New York City, asked his company of actors: "What can we as theater artists do as a response to this incident?"

     This was a similar question asked by Margarita Espada in her play "What Killed Marcelo Lucero?," based on the alleged stabbing death of Mr. Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant, by seven high school males near the Patchogue train station in 2008.

     Mr. Kaufman and nine members of his company traveled to Laramie and began interviewing its residents, returning six more times over a year and a half and conducting over 200 interviews. The result is a work of theatrical journalism, which had its debut in 2000. Since then, it has been produced frequently by regional, college, and high school theaters across the country, but not without controversy (it has been banned more than once by school boards that considered it "profane.")

     Michael Disher's elegant and sublime direction of this sad and powerful piece yields a superb and spare portrait of a modern tragedy, and as other reviewers have pointed out, "The Laramie Project" has become the "Our Town" of the 21st century, with Laramie filling in for the fictional Grover's Corners.

     Mr. Disher has cultivated a gold mine of exceptional actors who have appeared in other Center Stage productions, and his influence on them is fully realized in this challenging production, which requires each actor to assume several personas based on the interviewees and members of the Tectonic acting company.

     The 15 actors give us a bird's eye view of the town, its history of ranching and past as a onetime railroad hub, its big sky and open vistas; the kind of place where everybody knows your business. The hidden underbelly of Laramie, similar to those of other towns across the country, is slowly revealed -- the effects of unemployment, the division between the working class and the students and employees at the university, and the growing problem of drug and alcohol addiction.

     Drumbeats of mistrust, prejudice, hate, and fear grow louder throughout, punctuated powerfully by Peter Eilenberg's painterly lighting design, which adds texture to the canvas of the stark stage set consisting of a dozen chairs. Mr. Disher has also included a rear projection of images from Laramie, from Main Street to the buck fence on which Matthew Shepard was left to die.

     There are lines in this play that resonate long after the lights dim, words that serve as reminders that these crimes of hate are not limited to out-of-the-way towns like Laramie, where one character says, "We don't grow children like that here." Or the sole Muslim resident, a woman, questions why, when these inexplicable acts of violence occur, people say, "We're not like that." She repeats, as if wrestling with the collective conscience of the whole town, "We are like that! We are like that!"

     With understated bravura the cast as a whole, despite a couple of weaknesses, presents a collage of identifiable, flawed human beings struggling to understand what has happened in their town. A few of the performers approached their many roles with affecting nuance and stirring conviction and deserve to be recognized. With a slight shift of expression, the mesmerizing Paul Consiglio transforms from a middle-aged, soft-spoken gay man who lives in Laramie, into the tough, surly chief investigator of the murder, Officer Rob DeBree.

     Allison-Rose DeTemple, who plays Reggie Fluty, the first police officer on the scene, who ended up contracting H.I.V. from Mr. Shepard in her attempts to revive him, is simply remarkable in conveying the startling grace and no-bullshit integrity of Ms. Fluty.

     A handful of others, who so dazzled in last year's production of "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," also stood out, including the shape-shifting Adam Fronc, Bethany Dellapolla, and V.J. Chiaramonte. It will be interesting to see what Mr. Disher will do with this young, talented stable of artists next.

     "The Laramie Project" is an invigorating piece of contemporary theater, and is the third and last play in the Center Stage's triple play event, which included Noel Coward's "Private Lives" and "12 Angry Men." Mr. Disher has hit a homerun, presenting a stripped-down, barebones Brechtian production, the kind of play that offers no answers, but somehow leaves one feeling hope.

     The play can be seen tonight (Jan. 29) and tomorrow at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2:30 p.m., and Feb. 4 and Feb. 5 at 8 p.m. On Feb. 6 at 8 p.m. and Feb. 7 at 2:30 p.m., the Center Stage will present the last two performances of "12 Angry Men." Tickets cost $22, $10 for students.