What’s hot at Broadway Licensing Global? Check out the top trending titles of the week from Broadway Licensing, Dramatists Play Service, and Playscripts.
Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story Book, Music and Lyrics by Stephen Dolginoff
Relationships can be murder. Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story is a two-character musical drama that recounts the chilling true story of the legendary duo who committed one of the most infamous and heinous crimes of the twentieth century. Focusing on their obsessive relationship and utilizing Leopold’s 1958 parole hearing as a framework, Thrill Me reveals the series of events in 1924 Chicago that led about-to-be law students Leopold and Loeb to be forever remembered as “the thrill killers.” Nathan Leopold was passionate about Richard Loeb, who was passionate about crime and excitement. They created a secret agreement to satisfy each other’s needs. Soon Richard convinced Nathan that they embodied Nietzsche’s idea of the “Superman” and were above society. Then he drew him into his plan to lure a young boy to his death just to prove they could get away with it. But soon their perfect crime unraveled due to a careless mistake. Or was it so careless?
Visiting Mr. Green by Jeff Baron
Mr. Green, an elderly, retired dry cleaner, wanders into traffic and is almost hit by a car driven by Ross Gardiner, a 29-year-old corporate executive. The young man is sentenced to community service in which he must help the recent widower once a week for six months. What starts as a comedy about two men who do not want to be in the same room together, becomes a gripping and moving drama as they get to know each other, care about each other, and open old wounds they’ve been hiding for years. Translated into 25 languages, with over 600 productions in large and small venues, it has won numerous Best Play and Best Actor awards throughout the world.
Medea by Nelly E. Cuellar-Garcia
Deaf to the warnings of her nurse and chorus, grief-stricken Medea seeks solace in destroying Jason, her unfaithful husband. She ruthlessly severs her husband’s lineage only to find herself “alone and forsaken” alongside the man she condemned to desolate solitude. A condensed adaptation of the classic tragedy that effectively explores Medea’s disjointed psyche within the context of ancient Greek values.
The Siegel by Michael Mitnick
Ethan Siegel is in love. Tonight he’s going to ask Alice’s parents for permission to marry her. There’s just one hitch. Ethan and Alice broke up two years ago—and she’s in a serious relationship with someone else. But Ethan is undaunted. An irresistible comedy about modern love and the need to go back in order to move forward.
Bourbon at the Border by Pearl Cleage
When May and Charlie joined hundreds of other Americans who went to Mississippi in the summer of 1964 for a massive voter registration drive, they had no idea their lives were about to change forever. As students at Howard University, their campus activism had been met with calls to their parents and threats of expulsion. The stakes in Mississippi were a lot higher. White supremacists, outraged at the challenge to their segregated way of life, responded with violence that left three civil rights workers dead and many wounded. Years later, May and Charlie are still searching for a way back from the damage that was done to them during that long ago “Freedom Summer.” Unable to confide even in her best friend, Rosa, about the demons that haunt her dreams and twist Charlie’s love for her into something she can no longer recognize, May is convinced that if she can just get Charlie to leave Detroit and cross the bridge to Canada, they can start a new life. But when Rosa’s friend Tyrone gets Charlie a job as a truck driver, the madness of that summer bubbles over until it threatens all of their very lives. Bourbon at the Border takes a look at the lives of two ordinary people who gave everything they had to the African–American freedom struggle but who have now been largely forgotten. In telling May and Charlie’s story, Bourbon at the Border puts a human face on the unknown soldiers of the civil rights movement by refusing to romanticize them even as it honors their specific sacrifices and the price they paid.
