Garage Rep Steppenwolf Theatre Company
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He does so without snickers or condemnation, framing Brandes and Meiwes as a couple of hopeless—if psychically damaged—romantics who’ve simply taken metaphors about love at face value. Theirs is a literally consuming passion; they want to become one, to possess and be possessed by each other in the most elemental sense. Brandes insists that there must be nothing left of him when Meiwes is done—he wants Meiwes to smash him to powder and breathe him in. And Meiwes, lovingly, pledges to “destroy” him.
Is that absurd or profound? Certainly, there are moments that point out the strangeness of the affair, as when Brandes and Meiwes meet for the first time after conducting breathlessly intimate negotiations online, and spend the ride to Meiwes’s abattoir-equipped house getting to know each other. There’s also some speculation from Meiwes on whether his pact with Brandes is a matter of fate or just a kink amplified into obsession by the astonishing opportunities for indulgence provided by the Internet. But overall, Grush allows his characters a deep seriousness. This is a story of outlaw love completed by death, just like Romeo and Juliet.
Bockley and de Mayo stick close to the known facts of the twins’ lives prior to their incarceration but don’t stop with simple biography. They take us inside June and Jennifer’s often turbulent mind-meld—a universe populated by living dolls, a pal called Mr. Nobody, and, of course, the characters in their stories, which are performed in a long passage that’s hugely entertaining even though Bockley and de Mayo haven’t figured out how to fit it into the structure of the show.
