Laramie Project, SSC

I saw the first matinee of this production on Sunday ($10). It runs through this weekend. I found the material as artificial and agenda driven as I did when I saw it ten years ago. It is and was a cynical attempt to win an award by dramatizing (what could have been seen as a simple robbery, battery and possible man slaughter case if there was no felony battery statute) an event that the media and special interest groups conflated into a hate crime once they heard the victim was gay. One can make this statement if you look at the percentage of the dialogue that is allotted to both sides of the argument. One side has about 95% of the words and the other does not. It's akin to the real life beat down the victim suffered. One defensive blow for every twenty received. The fact that they declined to investigate the protagonists' motives is also a clue. They told them (and America) what those motives had to be. It was the same with the media coverage if you were alive when the crime was reported. These kids got caught in the political correctness machine and were used as sacrificial lambs to scare potential perpetrators of hate crimes (although they did get life sentences without hate crime legislation). Not to say they didn't commit a reprehensible act. They did. Just not the one these authors wanted to write about. Or wanted to stop writing about when the evidence pointed a different way. Most of the evidence suggest that gay bashing was not the motivating factor behind the crime. It was money. The battery could have been explained as a self defense to sexual assault on the part of the victim. A much better play would have been a critique on how the media and interest groups exploit and repurpose an event to convey a message they wish to champion and how the legal and political systems disfunction under said pressue. That is an interesting, multi-faceted proposition. This is just a one dimensional effort in didacticism. They should have at least included material from the accused (ala Capote's In Cold Blood). The language (supposedly taken from transcripts) is also too clean to have been authentic. I wonder how they slanted the very words in the material in addition to using the power of parsing and selective inclusion to bend the story. Well, now that you have my views on the source material, let's get to the production. The set design is good. The acting was acceptable. The actors were prepared. Maybe next time they will get material worthy of their effort. Not just some poor excuse that doesn't really convey the anti-bullying or pro gay rights message they were looking to send.

For the record I am for the protection of every class of people. My issue is with the quality of the argument they stand behind. They deserve better than this. We all deserve better than this. This is not an issue that needs sophistry or self interested rhetoric. It can survive examination of all the points of view.