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Beverley Brommert
THRILL ME: THE LEOPOLD & LOEB STORY is a modern musical based on the true story of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the so-called "thrill killers" who committed a murder in 1924 in order to commit "the perfect crime." It’s currently onstage at Theatre on the Bay until 15 March 2025.
Four talents complement each other to brilliant effect in generating this exceptional piece of entertainment: one director, two actors, and one keyboard artist. Between them, they have produced some 90 minutes of dark , multilayered drama laced with music that engages the audience from start to finish.
Based on the true story of a murder carried out for no other reason than to gratify an amoral addiction to risk, Stephen Dolginoff's THRILL ME takes its audience on an unnerving journey into a world of obsession, egocentric depravity and subtle shifts in the exercise of power as one dominant human being seeks to exploit the weakness of another.
A two-hander of mesmerising intensity such as this is a gift to a director, and veteran Christopher Weare milks it for all it is worth to elicit exemplary portrayals from Gianluca Gironi and John Conrad as Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold respectively.
Gironi musters all the glacial assurance of Loeb, a young man besotted with the cult of heroic vitalism à la Nietzsche and a slave to his own superiority complex. A superb foil is offered to his persona by the vacillating diffidence of Conrad's Leopold, besotted with a sexual desire for his charismatic contemporary which renders him incapable of refusing the most extreme demands.
As the pair embark on a career of crime that immerses them ever deeper from the shallows of delinquency into the Stygian waters of murder, the experience becomes too rich for for the thin-blooded Leopold...with unexpected results.
Their iniquity burst upon an astonished world in 1924, and this drama starts more than three decades later, when Leopold was released from prison in 1958.Â
Their period costumes are devised with scrupulous attention to detail to anchor them in the age, although the implications of their relationship, the volatile balancing of subjugation with dominance, are timeless.
Ande Gibson's austere set, enhanced by Luke Ellenbogen's lighting design, provides an ideal arena for enacting this complex drama, with little to distract eye or mind from the content of the work. After a plangently ominous prelude from his keyboard, musical accompaniment from Jaco Griessel is kept at the optimum level to complement the duo's vocal performance, which is confidentlyÂ
addressed. Among several highlights is a duet in which the ghoulish pair chattily debate the identity of a suitable murder victim, its easy lyricism at odds with the grisly topic.
Despite its title, this musical is more about thrall rather than thrill, and there is no doubt that most of the audience are kept very much in the former throughout.
You have until 15 March 2025 to see THRILL ME: THE LEOPOLD & LOEB STORY at the Theatre at the Bay. Tickets can be booked online through Webtickets. Please note the show carries an age restriction of PG16.