The SF Bay Area Theatre Blog

My friend Will Giammona does a lot of shows, and I guess he has figure out that if you're going to invite your friends to a lot of shows, your invitations better be entertaining in their own right. Hence the following "shameless plug." Even in my current homebody, barely-leave-the-house, uninspired-by-most-theatre state I'm feeling the itch to go see this.

Check out why:

Greetings Theatergoers!

The third and final installment in my Child Abuse trilogy of roles is finally here! (see previous emails on The Diviners and The Secret Garden) I'm playing Richard in Thrill Me a new two-person show based on the real life killers/lovers Nathan Leopold & Richard Loeb who murdered little Bobby Franks in Chicago in 1924. And yes, it's a musical.

Because I know it's a new show and most of you have never heard of it, I thought I would help you out a bit by comparing my role of Richard to a role that everyone is familiar with: Curly from Oklahoma. The two roles are surprisingly similar. Let me show you what I mean:

In Oklahoma, Curly sings…
…about the joy he feels at watching the light from the morning sun rise over the cornfields.

In Thrill Me, Richard sings…
…about the joy he feels at watching the light from a gasoline fire he started burn warehouse to the ground.

In Oklahoma, Curly sings…
…to lure Laurie into a surrey to take her to the box social.

In Thrill Me, Richard sings…
…to lure a boy into his car to bludgeon him to death with a chisel.

In Oklahoma, Curly sings…
…that he and Laurie should not be bothered by what other people think because they're in love.

In Thrill Me, Richard sings…
…that he and Nathan should not be bothered by other what other people think because they are the epitome of Nietzsche's Ubermensch philosophy.

In Oklahoma, Curly sings…
…to show Judd how nice things will be at his funeral would be when he dies.

In Thrill Me, Richard sings…
… to show Nathan how nice things will be after they kill his brother John.

In Oklahoma, Curly sings…
… about his future within the state of Oklahoma for the rest of his life.

In Thrill Me, Richard sings…
…about his future within the state penitentiary of Joliet prison for the rest of his life plus 99 years.

As you can see, the comparison is staggering--it's basically Oklahoma, except that Laurie is an oversexed man with masochistic tendencies and Judd is a fourteen year old boy. Ok, maybe not. It's a little more like Sweeney Todd meets I Do, I Do with a gay twist. Despite how dark it sounds, it's not a graphic show as neither the violence nor sex is shown in any detail. But boy is it dark!

The show is really coming together and we're ready for an audience. Some of you may know others involved with the show:
Nathan is played by the extremely talented Ricardo Rust (most recently in the Willow's Jesus Christ Superstar), the show is directed by Dennis Lickteig, and the musical direction and piano accompaniment is by Tim Hanson.

For tickets and more information about the New Conservatory Theatre (on Van Ness in San Francisco), check out: http://www.nctcsf.org/ The show starts previews on March 28th and officially opens on April 5th and runs until the beginning of May.

Hope to see you there!

-Will

But what's next for our child-abusing baritone? Can't we do a happy musical next time? Yes! Up next is the role of Tommy Albright, the New Yorker who finds love and escape in the mystical village of Brigadoon for DLOC in conjunction with the Diablo Symphony.

PS-In his email he had those nice Curly/Richard comparisons laid out in an easy to read table, but my html skillz are not that organic that I remembered exactly how to do that, and I gotta get ready for work in a few minutes. Hope you get the gist, though.

Labels: Leopold and Loeb, New Conservatory Theatre, Will Giammona