Matthew Shepard, a young gay student at the University of Wyoming, was discovered on October 7, 1998, beaten severely and barely alive, lashed to a fence in the hills outside the little town of Laramie in the Midwest (population: 26,000). Two equally young and uneducated locals picked Shepard up from a pub, robbed him, and then abandoned him to perish in the forest. They were shortly caught. Five days later, Shepard passed away as reporters swarmed and made fast decisions about why this homophobic crime had occurred, what it meant for Laramie, and what it meant for the country.

The eight actors in David Farley’s well-paced production, directed by Ruth Carney, represent a wide range of characters, from the young people who perpetrated the crime to the judge who convicted them.