A show with a very serious message, yet which is heartwarming and humorous.
This show, set ten years on from the incident, revisits the story of Matthew Shepherd, a young man whose life was tragically ended, though there is debate as to whether his death was a hate crime or merely a robbery gone wrong. Through a collection of verbatim interview segments, the cast explore all sides of the story, past and present. It battles with homophobia, prejudice society and the idea of
perpetuating a person’s memory beyond their final day. In 10 years time, will anyone remember our legacy?
TLP is performed by a cast of eight yet has no less than 43 characters. The first couple of minutes are slightly confusing as the cast dart about the stage changing rapidly from character to character establishing the base of the story but pace slows down as the show progresses making it much easier to follow. There is no defined set, merely chairs and tables which are moved from place to place and simple lighting which follows accordingly. The constant shifting lends itself to a ‘stream of consciousness’ feel as though one person is telling us about all the separate interactions as they play out before our eyes.
Being a story from America, the cast members naturally adopt a range of American accents. Most of these are performed impeccably with some cast members taking on multiple accents according to their character load. One of the ladies, however, had a noticeably kiwi drawl to her "accent" and I felt disappointed that everyone else had stepped up to the plate and the illusion could be let down by one weak link.
Various characters (all based on real-life residents of Laramie) naturally have varying degrees of understanding and opinions as to the nature of the crime, all of which are presented evenly and without biased. One of the greatest things about TLP: 10YO is that it isn’t made to spoon-feed a string of opinions to the audience; we hear everyone’s story and it is up to the individual to find their own conclusion.
I found I was regularly reminding myself, this is real. The people I’m seeing exist, this is someone’s son being put on display. What are we meant to learn from this? I think that is essentially what TLP: 10YO really asks of its audience, for us to learn something. Form insightful opinions and learn to question our society. “Laramie is not a homophobic community, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t one or two out there.” What parts of Laramie do we see reflected in our own society and what are we willing to do to change that?
Insightful, thought-provoking and incredibly well performed.
This show, set ten years on from the incident, revisits the story of Matthew Shepherd, a young man whose life was tragically ended, though there is debate as to whether his death was a hate crime or merely a robbery gone wrong. Through a collection of verbatim interview segments, the cast explore all sides of the story, past and present. It battles with homophobia, prejudice society and the idea of
perpetuating a person’s memory beyond their final day. In 10 years time, will anyone remember our legacy?
TLP is performed by a cast of eight yet has no less than 43 characters. The first couple of minutes are slightly confusing as the cast dart about the stage changing rapidly from character to character establishing the base of the story but pace slows down as the show progresses making it much easier to follow. There is no defined set, merely chairs and tables which are moved from place to place and simple lighting which follows accordingly. The constant shifting lends itself to a ‘stream of consciousness’ feel as though one person is telling us about all the separate interactions as they play out before our eyes.
Being a story from America, the cast members naturally adopt a range of American accents. Most of these are performed impeccably with some cast members taking on multiple accents according to their character load. One of the ladies, however, had a noticeably kiwi drawl to her "accent" and I felt disappointed that everyone else had stepped up to the plate and the illusion could be let down by one weak link.
Various characters (all based on real-life residents of Laramie) naturally have varying degrees of understanding and opinions as to the nature of the crime, all of which are presented evenly and without biased. One of the greatest things about TLP: 10YO is that it isn’t made to spoon-feed a string of opinions to the audience; we hear everyone’s story and it is up to the individual to find their own conclusion.
I found I was regularly reminding myself, this is real. The people I’m seeing exist, this is someone’s son being put on display. What are we meant to learn from this? I think that is essentially what TLP: 10YO really asks of its audience, for us to learn something. Form insightful opinions and learn to question our society. “Laramie is not a homophobic community, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t one or two out there.” What parts of Laramie do we see reflected in our own society and what are we willing to do to change that?
Insightful, thought-provoking and incredibly well performed.
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