Complexity of Tragedy In-The Round

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Photo by Paul Ruffolo

First Stage - The Laramie Project

Costello Mylott and cast in The Laramie Project.

First Stage’s Young Company wrestles with deep emotional complexity at year’s end with a production of Moisés Kaufman‘s The Laramie Project. Director Elyse Edelman brings together a cast of young actors in a thoughtful staging of the historical drama about the killing of Matthew Shepherd and its impact on a small town. Edelman stages the drama in-the-round as an engagingly diverse cast tumbles through bits of monologue drawn from actual interviews with Laramie residents who were there at the time of the brutal murder of a young gay University of Wyoming student in the late 1990s.

A large ensemble of First Stage students play everything from longtime friends of the victim to acquaintances people who were there with him on his final night to the people who have come to interview them all for the purpose of writing a play about the event. Characters come out crisp and distinct in a flurry of monologues that etch their way around a large, expansive narrative exploring the lives of Shepard, his murders and the people of the town where it happened.

Scenic Director Amy Sue Hazel’s simple grey set allows the personal stories of individuals to take the center of the drama. Edelman has carefully crafted the pacing to allow poignant moments their time while keeping the massive, bewildering dynamic of numerous voices moving straight through an engrossing drama of over two hours with two intermissions. The Laramie Project is a dense and massive drama of tremendous emotional weight that can feel stagnant at times. Edelman has set a talented cast pacing and tangling and tumbling through the deep end of human love, beauty and brutality in a way that deftly holds the attention from beginning to end.

The Laramie Project continues through Dec. 12 at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center, 325 W. Walnut St. For tickets, visit www.firststage.org or call the box office at (414) 267-2961.