Arts & Culture
Alex Sabin and Thomas Bevan play infamous criminals Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.
The crime of the century comes to Stevens Point
The Pointer
lgern177@uwsp.edu
“Never the Sinner,” a dynamic play about the complexity of crime and the individuals who commit it, left not a single empty seat this weekend in the Noel Fine Arts Center’s Studio Theatre.
The play’s writer, John Logan, explored the many dimensions of the human psyche, set against the backdrop of the Chicago as an emerging industrial power in the 1920s. Logan is known for penning screenplays that delve into crime from an atypical vantage point such as “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
Students Alex Sabin and Thomas Bevan played the leading roles with finesse, but five other actors that comprised this production conveyed the depth and range of Logan’s characters with professional fluidity as well, oftentimes donning multiple roles.
Peter Hargaten, for instance, seamlessly played a reporter, psychologist, sergeant, bailiff and butler. Meagan Wells played a reporter, Loeb’s girlfriend and a psychologist. Eric Harper played a reporter and a psychologist.
A significant portion of the play was a courtroom enactment. The attorneys Clarence Darrow and Robert Crowe, played by James Roland and Thomas Bevan respectively, created a spellbinding tension from exploring the intricacies and consequences of the murderer’s intelligence.
An underlying theme throughout the play was the issue of morality. The criminals had theorized they were “ubermenschen,” or supermen, and above the rules that bind the rest of mankind. They justified committing murder on this basis, because, as they told the courtroom, they could.
But defining the two main characters by this irreverence would be a mistake. In reality, the boys, as their defense attorney Darrow repeatedly referred to them, were one-dimensional enough for such categorizations.
Though both Loeb and Leopold referred often to their families, it was with each other they showed the most affection. In fact, they had a pact in which Loeb, in exchange for a partner in crime, was Leopold’s partner in bed. By the end of the film though, when Leopold stated if they were to be separated in prison he would rather be hanged, the feelings were undoubtedly mutual.
In the end it was also clear, when they realized they would not be let off the hook as easily as they had previously thought, they had fallen from their self-prescribed greatness. This became especially evident when Loeb asked Leopold, “We’re not ubermenschen anymore, are we?”
“I really didn’t know what it was about,” said University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point student Lynnea Chelmo. “The acting was really good, but it was really sad, kind of depressing.”
The ending was, to others, fittingly realistic, with the two criminals sentenced to life in jail and then some. But in light of their senseless crime, the sentence was light, perhaps due to Darrow and his compassionate philosophy, “Hate the sin, but never the sinner.”
Filled with morbid humor and characters that wove a strong, thought-provoking plot with their performance, the show was indisputably a success.
“The acting, tech and design were all excellent,” student Arne Parrott said. “It was a thought-provoking, well-honed, clearly well-rehearsed, well-oiled machine.”
