But his presence pervades the new play, behind or within every sentence or pause of the townspeople of Laramie, who gave copious interviews to the Tectonic Theater Project for the creation of its moving and thoughtful new play. Shepard's youthful face, having been splashed across news media around the world, sets up residency somewhere just behind the eyelids, a transparency coloring the onstage events at the Ricketson Theatre of the Denver Center Theatre Company. The people of Laramie are depicted as having been refracted through the perceptions of the theater company. Those self-conscious constructs fall by the wayside as more than a dozen townspeople string together a year of slow torture, not only for the principals of the tragedy but for the city as a whole. That dissolve into a theatrical reality is the play' s only flaw, in that it does not push far enough in its efforts to transform the way we understand drama.
Characters come and go in episodic nature, and the actors fluidly switch characters.
The audience knows how to process this information, and settles into the relative comfort of a language it understands. The material is anything but comfortable. We are acquainted with them much better through the play. It comes as a surprise to be once again plunged into the raw, bloody pain of such enormous cruelty. Eight actors of the Tectonic Theater Project play the multiple roles of The Laramie Project, and all are wonderfully gifted.