Chicago murderers Nathan Leopold Jr and Robert Loeb were young, handsome, wealthy and extremely intelligent.
The pair believed the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of supermen. They decided their superior intellects allowed them to rise above laws and rules that bound the rest of the population.
To prove the theory, the pair meticulously plot the cold-blooded murder of a 14-year-old boy.
One small slip-up, however, left them fighting for their lives in court with the death penalty hanging over them.
Never the Sinner
Making its Australian premiere, Never The Sinner is the latest offering from New Farm’s Nash Theatre and will run 9-30 May.
Based on real events, the US press billed the Leopold and Loeb trial as the ‘crime of the century’.
The press covered every salacious detail of the events and court proceedings throughout the 1920s.
Spared the death penalty, the judge sentenced both men to life imprisonment.
Leopold and Loeb
Loeb died after an attack by a prisoner armed with a straight razor in 1936. Evidence showed Loeb previously rejected sexual advances from his killer.
Released in 1958, Leopold died of a heart attack in 1971.
The murder inspired a number of film, theatre, and fiction works in the years since it occurred.
Now 90 years later, the themes of Never The Sinner, are just as relevant today.
The United States still grapples with powerful arguments for and against the death penalty.
Director Dan Lane was previously responsible for Nash Theatre’s award-winning production of The Laramie Project which told the story of Matthew Shepard’s final days.
Nash Theatre’s Never The Sinner will play from 9 – 30 May at The Brunswick Room (Merthyr Rd Uniting Church), 53 Merthy Rd, New Farm.
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