Compassionate view of hatred

One of the most thoughtful, scrupulous and powerful pieces of reportage theatre of recent years, The Laramie Project was last seen on the London fringe in 2003.

Ruth Carney's revival moves it to the Sound Theatre, an intimate 200-seat venue by Leicester Square that makes a welcome addition to the West End's proscenium arches.

According to one of its residents, the small town of Laramie, Wyoming, is 'live and let live'. Except that it isn't - or at least it wasn't in October 1988, when Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay university student, was picked up by two local youths, pistol-whipped and left lashed to a fence in the prairie.

He was found after 18 hours and died of his injuries five days later in hospital. It was a hate crime that made headline news. Devised by Moises Kaufman and New York's Tectonic Theatre, the play reconstructs Shepard's story.

The company interviewed dozens of people in Laramie, talking to police officers, doctors, religious leaders, the young man who found Shepard and Shepard's friends. We get their words in a beautifully edited documentary that shows us a town trying to come to terms with a brutal murder and lets us decide what kind of place it really is.

Some of the accents in this ensemble are rickety but this is an evening that balances 'the magnitude with which some people hate' with compassion. There's no fuss and no artifice here, just great decency.

Until Jul 16, Sound Theatre, 10 Wardour Street, W1, Tue to Sat 7.15pm, Thu and Sat mats 3.15pm, £15, £12 concs. Tel: 0870 890 0503. www.soundtheatre.co.uk. Tube: Leicester Square

The Laramie Project