On paper, 'The Laramie Project' appears to be as much a documentary as a play. Together with the Tectonic Theatre Project, Moises Kaufman constructed his work around dozens of interviews with the people of Laramie, a town scarred in 1998 by the murder of gay college student Matthew Sheppard. The script remains faithful to the views he and his colleagues encountered on their travels, and adds little in the way of artistic license. Oxford Triptych Theatre's production is well-suited to this starkness; from the minimal set (eight chairs for eight actors) to the lack of props and costumes, this is about as un-theatrical as a play can get, and paradoxically, makes for great drama.

It is not an easy balance to achieve. Plays that deal overtly and intentionally with 'issues', particularly recent events, can come across as either sermonic or sentimental; sometimes, history has not yet cleared the path for objective or measured viewpoints. 'The Laramie Project's approach towards a brutal hate crime turns this muddle of opinion to its advantage, by assembling a narrative from numerous personal recollections. It's really as much about how we construct our own stories in the wake of communal loss; the reclusive gay man who cries as he watches a vigil for Matthew from his window, or the policewoman thrown into panic on discovering she has made contact with HIV-infected blood.

At times, this strategy can be a little confusing too. With each actor tackling at least three or four roles throughout, the play at times has a stop-start feel. Simon Tavener's direction has got round this by using accent to denote the changes; but the range of voices occasionally challenges the smalltown setting, diminishing the sense of place suggested by the title.

Ultimately though, it is precisely what this production wants us to question. Sheppard's death could just as easily have happened in Liverpool or Limerick as in Laramie. The use of regional British and Irish accents brings an issue which might have been dismissed as a casualty of American bigotry right into our own provinces. The debates that are sparked, on the death penalty, homophobia, religious hypocrisy and juvenile delinquency, are all chillingly familiar to us in Britain, and the actors' nuanced performances play with our preconceptions without recourse to judgmental stereotyping.

Notwithstanding an occasional comic vignette, this piece is appropriately sombre and contemplative. If, like me, you are shocked by the extremes to which sexual intolerance can descend, you will applaud its courage in tackling them; if you are cynical and pessimistic about the human capacity for revised opinion, you may just change your mind.

Andrew Blades, 25/01/05