Which is why journo-drama—the hybrid that is The Laramie Project—is such a fascinating, albeit awkward, experiment. And it gets an earnest, albeit uneven, treatment by the Nevada Conservatory Theatre.
Laramie, rightly lauded for its uniqueness and bold approach, is based on a couple hundred interviews conducted by Moises Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theatre Project in the wake of the hate-fueled 1998 assault on Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, just outside the small Wyoming burg. The 21-year-old Shepard was viciously beaten, tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie and left for dead; he later died in a hospital. The resulting play has 15 UNLV actors portraying more than 60 people—from the preacher to the cops, barflies to townies, doctors to the victim's grieving father, friends of the murderers to the murderers themselves—as well as the interviewers. The point is to assemble a snapshot of a town post-tragedy, exploring both heartfelt compassion and simmering hostilities toward homosexuality—especially those lurking just beneath the surface sympathy of some citizens—from the attack through Shepard's death and funeral, and the trial of his two killers.
It is, as one character describes it, about being "gay in cowboy country" (pre-Brokeback Mountain).
A mass interview daringly translated to the vocabulary of the stage, Laramie spins on the notion that dozens of character sketches coalesce into a penetrating portrait, yet it never escapes the trappings of a stunt and the scent of superficiality. It's drama in a Petri dish, a conversation piece more admirable than absorbing. With so many actors playing so many roles, for the audience it's sometimes less about the power of the narrative than merely keeping score. And given the plot based on a historically recent, nationally reported story, the lack of surprises robs it of any palpable forward motion.
NCT never really steadies this unwieldy creature, yet there are enough credible performances among the multitasking cast and intriguing multimedia touches by director Sarah Norris to keep us mildly engaged—and occasionally baffled. Actors mill about as the audience arrives, while a guitarist strums and a woman croons a bluesy ballad. Perhaps it's designed to ease us into a sense of small-town familiarity, but it plays as simply superfluous.
It's furiously paced to a point teetering between briskness and dizziness—on a stage configuration placing some viewers at a visual disadvantage—with actors racing on and off, shedding and donning costumes, transporting and replacing props, introducing and reintroducing characters. A screen flashes slides of Laramie, and Norris frames scene designer Carla Siller's wall of swirling colors, befitting the play's rapid currents, with media designer David Diaz's folding doors that open to display banks of TV monitors. Norris deploys them as effective punctuation on moments such as massive media saturation when the Shepard story broke, screens a-babble with talking heads, and somber candlelight vigils, all filmed by the cast.
But Norris missteps on a visual better left unseen. The only character who comes into clear focus among this fast-flowing pastiche is the one who isn't physically portrayed: Shepard himself, who builds to something approaching charismatic life via the memories of others. Norris aims to jolt us when, late in the production at a gathering for the murder victim, placards are flipped to puzzle together the face of the real Shepard. And we are jolted. But similar to how the eye can never view anything as vividly as the imagination can conjure, his visage detracts from the haunting presence crafted by others' words.
The cast—among them NCT vets Steven Fehr, Taylor Hanes, Joan Mullaney, Steve Rapella, Thomas Sawicki and Joe Watkins—manage several moments spanning genuine poignancy to unsettling human ugliness. But while attempting to embody so many characters, they also lapse into playing "types" rather than individuals, a failing attributable not only to the director but a script that stretches its cast wafer-thin.
Sketch comedy thrives on such ensemble elasticity. Drama doesn't, even when intentions are noble and the experiment daring.