Dickie and Babe:

The Truth About Leopold and Loeb

 

The Blank Theatre Company is known for its challenging innovative productions, many having won awards. Daniel Henning, the artistic director of the company, an outstanding director, is now trying his luck at playwriting. Well, he is a pretty lucky guy because the result is a riveting production called Dickie and Babe that tells the familiar tale of the “Thrill Killers Richard “Dickie” Loeb and Nathan “Babe” Leopold who committed one of the most infamous crimes in US history. They kidnapped the 14-year-old Bobby Franks and killed him just for the thrill of the experience and to see if they could commit “the perfect crime”. Basing the play on actual transcripts and newly discovered documents, Henning has fashioned a very compelling play, filling in the private conversations based on the ‘ testimony and other descriptions by friends and family.

It is very difficult to make a workable play out of transcripts. Henning succeeds for the most part by his inventive direction and the set design by Roy Rede. Rede places the action in a neutral looking space that suggests a courtroom. The only furniture are the chairs in the back where the cast sits, a big table which doubles as a bed, and wooden office /courtroom chairs on wheels which the actors move about the stage to recreate a car, the court, their collage dorm rooms etc. The design is simple, effective, and rather elegant.

The actors are very good. I had the good fortune to catch two understudies, Stacy Reed and Wilson Green who capably fill the shoes of actors Michael Urie and Vicki Lewis. Nick Niven plays the hyper-kinetic Dickie, the strongest of the pair and perhaps the most disturbed. His character seems quite mad until he reads a letter he wrote to defense council Clarence Darrow which was recently unearthed by author Henning, where he thanks the defense council for his heartfelt and human pleadings The talented Weston Blakesley plays Darrow and is very moving as he recreates Darrow’s summation to the jury where he pleads for mercy because of the boys age (18 and 19). Nick Niven bearing a striking resemblance to Dickie has a very hard job of keeping his manic seductive energy going throughout the play. He succeeds. We understand how Babe could succumb to his charms.

Aaron Himmelstein, who has a barrel- full of impressive credits, plays the sexually suppressed and needy but brilliant Babe. I was particularly taken with his performance and found myself sympathetic to his fatal attraction to Dickie. I believe one of the reasons Henning wrote this play was to set the record straight. The story has long been sensationalized and the boys Jewishness and homosexual relationship where exploited. The truth is the crime had nothing to do with either. These were lonely, extremely intelligent boys who formed a fatal friendship. Though homosexuality played a part (at least for Babe and manipulated by Dickie) what actually occurred, whispered in the court so as not to offend was little more than bodily rubbing which is part of the experimentation that young people do. The way Henning has captured their relationship is very believable and totally and tragically understandable. I was totally immersed in the play and the performances. Another success for The Blank Theatre Company, playing until March 30.