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`SINNER` RECALLS A SHOCKING CRIME

The ”crime of the century,” committed 61 years ago in Chicago, once more unfolded its high drama Tuesday night at Stormfield Theatre in ”Never the Sinner,” a new play about the ”thrill killers” case of Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb.

Already chronicled in many novels, plays and films, the crime and its subsequent trial continue to keep their hold on us. The brutality of the murder–the bludgeoning to death of 14-year-old Bobby Franks by two wealthy and intelligent boys, ages 19 and 18–and the sensation of the subsequent trial–in which Clarence Darrow, the confessed killers` famous lawyer, was successful in keeping them from the hangman–have lost none of their horror or fascination through repetition.

John Logan, the young author who has retold the story in ”Sinner,” does not present his work as either a journalistic document or as strictly a trial drama. His play–which gets its title from a remark attributed to Darrow, that ”I may hate the sin, but never the sinner”–leaves out large parts of the trial`s long story; and though parts of the summaries to the jury by State`s Atty. Robert Crowe, demanding the death penalty, and by Darrow, pleading for mercy, are included, they are not big, flamboyant showpieces, such as Orson Welles` hambone orations in the movie version of Meyer Levin`s ”Compulsion.”

Using court transcripts, newspaper accounts and imagined dialogue, and with a 1980s sensibility that deals directly with the two boys` homosexuality, Logan instead concentrates on the nature of the relationship between the brilliant ”Babe” Leopold and his mesmerizing lover ”Dickie” Loeb.

The play, confined to a courtroom pen in Russ Borski`s varnished wood set, begins with Leopold, a devoted ornithologist, giving a lecture on birds of prey. Then, with the lighting of Borski and Mary Quinlan helping to make the transitions, the drama moves between the courtroom and flashbacks of the defendants` boyhood and the immediate events surrounding their decision to kill as ”an intellectual-emotional experience.”

Three actors on the periphery act as reporters, psychiatrists and witnesses, filling in the continuity between courtroom scenes.

At the end of the play, Logan intercuts the final arguments of Crowe and Darrow, so that they, in effect, form a debate on capital punishment. Jerry Bloom, as a dapper, dogged Crowe, and Richard Burton Brown, as a kindly, homespun Darrow, bring off this counterpoint effectively.

But it is on the two boys that this play rests, and, under Terry McCabe`s direction, two young actors new to Chicago–Denis O`Hare, as Leopold, and Bryan Stillman, as Loeb–carry the show.

Some of the play`s pacing is off, bits of its impressionistic reportage misfire, and the two principals occasionally rush or swallow their lines. But the big scenes, including the abduction and murder of Franks, play thrillingly; and Stillman and O`Hare make the intimacy and the sickness of their affair both tender and horrifying.

With his good looks and dazzling smile, Stillman aptly personifies the golden boy gone wrong in a nervous little laugh or sudden burst of violence.

O`Hare, already an actor of finesse and power, gives us a white-faced and high-strung Leopold, polite and correct in manner but portrayed with white-knuckle intensity. Whether breaking down in tears when he realizes he is not a ”superman” or holding his elusive lover in a desperate embrace, he is a character actor of riveting force.

”NEVER THE SINNER”

A new play by John Logan, directed by Terry McCabe, with a set by Russ Borski, lighting by Borski and Mary Quinlan and costumes by Glenn S. Billings. Opened Sept. 10 at Stormfield Theatre, 6443 N. Sheridan Rd., and plays at 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, through Oct. 27. Length of performance, 1:55. Tickets are $7.50 and $9, with discounts for students, groups and senior citizens. Phone 465-3030.

THE CAST

Nathan Leopold Jr……….Denis O`Hare

Richard Loeb………….Bryan Stillman

State`s Atty. Crowe………Jerry Bloom

Clarence Darrow….Richard Burton Brown

With Mitch Webb, Thomas Carroll, Donna Powers.