Powerful 'Laramie Project' is final piece in Center Stage triple-play

And so, the third play in Michael Disher’s experimental January trilogy at the Southampton Cultural Center has arrived. And it’s quite a finale.

Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Project’s “The Laramie Project” is a striking, hard-hitting, moving assemblage of some of the hundreds of interviews conducted by Tectonic Theater’s writers and actors with some of the townspeople of Laramie, Wyoming, following the 1998 kidnapping, beating, and murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard. It’s a gripping, disturbing, and audience involving manifestation of Thornton Wilder’s notion of what’s necessary for true theater: “A platform and a passion or two.”

There are quite a few more than two passions in this very contemporary gathering of many feelings and many expressions of them. Much of its power comes from its authenticity, its here-and-nowness as a small town’s character is laid bare in the contrasting confessions of its recognizable residents. Some are compassionate and regretful. Some form a fragment of the conflicting forces that led to this horrific hate crime. In its retelling, it becomes a collective paradoxical symbol of a frequently empathetic and sometimes violent, divided, and dismissive community, a possible breeding ground for the sort of immorality that can and does chip away at our idealistic American self image of a decent, open-minded, society of equals.

It’s all there in Southampton, in a powerful production that contains some bravura acting, underlined and intensified by some complex, equally bravura directing. It’s true, Wilder theater: there’s nothing onstage but a series of mismatched black chairs, and a screen upon which images are projected to match the content of the words being spoken by 15 actors garbed in black playing 36 characters and a narrator. Mr. Disher moves them fluidly from scene to scene with constantly changing and renewing and original stage pictures, warmly and affectingly lit by Peter Eilenber’s equally complex lighting design. The effect is shattering and lasting.

It’s almost unfair to separate out some of the actors in this tightly wrought ensemble, but, as with a large canvas, the eye and attention sooner or later become focused on parts of the painting and specific details, even while absorbing and being moved by the entire sweep of the work.

Vay David is a commanding presence as the narrator and several other Laramie women, a force that steers the movement of the unfolding story. Randall Krongard and Matthew Ruggiero move from feigned dismissiveness to agonized guilt over the terrible and unexpected, though somehow inevitable tragedy in Laramie.

Allison-Rose DeTemple beautifully and tellingly creates a number of contrasting characters. Her most moving moments unfold when Reggie Fury, the policewoman who is the first official at the scene of the crime, tries to revive the dying man, learning later that the victim was HIV positive and she must be treated against the possibility that she has been infected.

Paul Consigliore is impressive as the detective assigned to the case. Bethany Dellapolla believably creates a number of contrasting local women, and Deborah Marshall is heartrending as she leads other residents to become angels in order to derail the anti-gay protesters who arrive at Matthew Shepard’s funeral. V.J. Chiaramonte, as Matt Galloway, the bartender at the Fireside Bar, where Shepard met the two men who abducted and then killed him, is forceful and fine.

Ken Rowland, as Dr. Cantway, the emergency room doctor who treats Matthew Shepard and must, with great difficulty, describe his injuries to the press and the town, is wistfully intense. James Macaluso, as the anti-gay pastor who delivers an unpardonable mini-sermon at the funeral, is ringingly despicable. Bob Beodeker, as Matthew Shepard’s father, is eloquently poignant. And Mr. Krongard, as the limousine driver who drove Matthew around and later realizes the scene that impressed the boy by its beauty was the spot at which he was tortured and killed, is quietly heartbreaking.

But every one of the 15 players is arresting and concentrated and enormously effective in this very contemporary, dynamic theater piece, which, for all its concentration on some of today’s more inhuman qualities, conceits and behaviors, is also rich with the sort of hope that comes from realization. It’s being given a stunning production in Southampton, well worth the experience.

“The Laramie Project” continues at the Southampton Cultural Center on Thursday and Friday, February 4 and 5, at 8 p.m. “Twelve Angry Men” will be presented on Saturday, February 6, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, February 7, at 2:30 p.m. The box office number is 287-4377, or visit southamptonculturalcenter.org.