Review: An Echoing Spring: A Story of Matthew Shepard

Review: An Echoing Spring: A Story of Matthew Shepard  | John Hand Theatre | Denver, CO | Curtain Up! | Gina Robertson | December 9, 2025

A special note: This week, we have a guest reviewer, Gina Robertson, joining the Curtain Up! team. Her bio is at the conclusion of the review.

Mike Broemmel’s haunting play about Matthew Shepard, An Echoing Spring, opened this week at the John Hand theater, a traveling production of Colorado TINTS. The stark image on stage and on the program of a split rail fence is more than a reminder, it’s a warning—this material is for the strong of heart.

The title refers to the poignant line, “On the coldest night of winter, I pray you hear an echo of spring,” a lovely and apt image that appears to be original to this piece of work.

Shepard’s brutal killing in 1998 brought America to a horrific understanding of the lives being lived by its gay population—the fear, the loneliness, the deadly epidemic that was additionally a “social death sentence” and the very real danger that other Americans posed to them every single day. In the words of Broemmel’s Matt Shepard, they counted the seconds lived in hell, and these were the thousands of seconds of their lives.

The play is an intimate series of monologues taking place after Matt’s death, alternating between Matt (played by Aiden Evans) and his mother Judy (Suzanne Nepi). They reflect on his life and his death while framing the context of both in gay activism, then and since, with the continued need for vigilance against hatred.

Nepi portrays the pride and grief that only a mother could. She manages to convey how broken a mother can be by the loss of her child with also the rage and determination that drives her to make the sons of other mothers safe where hers was not.

As Matthew Shepard, Evans is endearing, with an adorable way of crossing his eyes to emphasize a point. He talks about Matt’s life and that final day, with sweetness and anger. Evans allows Matt to be bitter toward the “Jethroes” and the dumb-asses as well as confused about the cruelty, not only of his murder but of a lonely life of 21 years in which he was often bullied, beaten and tormented. He was made to feel desperate for connection, which led him to get into a pickup truck with his killers.

Alternating monologues is an effective storytelling device that could be enhanced with more characters who knew and loved Matt. What, for instance, would his father Dennis say in this piece? Or his brother Logan?

Director Paul Page has made good use of a small space in this theater, giving Matt’s mother Judy an interesting bit of stage business to convey the swirling emotions and thoughts of grieving her son as he becomes a national symbol of hatred toward gay people.

Matt and his mom enter and exit the stage for their monologues, which becomes tedious in repetition. Nepi’s boots are rather loud each time on the quiet stage. Perhaps a similar effect could be achieved with creative lighting switches now and then instead, to break up the repetition a bit and create something more visually interesting.

Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are provides a nice thematic element for Nepi to use, reading Matt’s favorite bedtime story and then likening Max’s fictional battle with the wild things to Matt’s ordeal. The book allows for one sweet moment of connection between mother and son.

An Echoing Spring is like spending an hour with a search engine typing in questions about this nearly forgotten moment in American history. Who killed Matthew Shepard? Why? Are they in prison? Where is Matthew’s memorial? What happened to old Fred Phelps, whose church became famous for saying God hates gays? But the dramatization reminds us, America must not forgot.

Information and Tickets: https://theatrixdenver.wellattended.com/events/an-echoing-spring-a-story-of-matthew-shepard-1

Gina Robertson Bio

Twenty years ago, Gina Robertson discovered her love of theater while looking for extra-curricular activities for her severely ADHD child. Together they explored musicals, Shakespeare, and plays of all kinds on the stages of Dallas-Fort Worth. Soon she was volunteering to help with tech work like projections and lights, and writing reviews for John Garcia’s The Column. Her little thespian is all grown up now and has moved on to other hobbies, but Gina continues to seek out the theater scene wherever she goes. Most recently in Tulsa she operated a spotlight high up on the catwalk above the stage for unforgettable productions of Annie!, Once on This Island, Waitress, Oliver!, Hello Dollie, and for various junior productions for children. To see a show come together from rehearsals to opening night is truly like seeing a magic trick, and then to see it repeated every night while knowing the cast well enough to recognize every nuance and every slight change in the performance is a gift. Every show is ephemeral treasure that lasts only as long as the run and then it’s gone. New to Colorado, Gina is excited to find a vibrant theater scene and to review quality productions again for a passionate community.