BY EVAN HENERSON >THEATER CRITIC

In our latest example of Titanic theater ("here comes the iceberg!"), 2nd Stage Theatre audiences get the horror/joy of watching celebrated 1920s "thrill killers" Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold hurtle toward their despicable date with destiny.

Our temptation, alas, isn't to yell out warnings, or to hope our overprivileged antiheroes decide not to lure 14 year-old Bobby Franks into that rented car. Rather, Daniel Henning's play "Dickie & Babe: The Truth about Leopold & Loeb" looks to get inside its subjects' heads and chart the anatomy of a downfall. Henning wants you to take that "truth" as seriously as he did. The play, meticulously researched over a two-year period, professes to tell the story as it happened.

Leaning heavily on historical documentation and court transcripts, Henning - also "D&B's" director - looks to remove any sensationalism from the much-chronicled story. In the second act of this world premiere at the Blank Theatre Company at the 2nd Stage, this makes for a lot of verbatim trial talk, including a good chunk of Loeb's attorney Clarence Darrow's closing argument. (A second Leopold-and-Loeb-themed play, the musical "Thrill Me," is playing a few blocks down, at the Hudson.)

L&L enthusiasts may well find "D&B's" docudrama approach engaging, particularly those who want to cast the boys' behavior in a sexual light. If "Dickie & Babe" is to be believed, Leopold - while no innocent victim - did what he did largely in exchange for Loeb's friendship and accompanying sexual favors. Given what a feckless egotist Nick Niven's Dickie is, we can only hope the character was an awfully good bedfellow.

Mostly, "Dickie & Babe" is a grim but quick-moving account of a couple of too-smart teens who killed because the act presented a challenge and they were certain they could get away with it. People this brilliant, Dickie and Babe figure - are entitled: to wealth, fame, lack of consequences.

How chilly are they? Take the scene where the boys have grown bored with petty theft and are contemplating a kidnapping. Except to pull off the perfect plan, they quickly reason, the kidnap victim will have to be killed. This little detail change - "we'll be murderers, not kidnappers" - barely merits a missed step.

Loeb, in this telling, is every bit the ringmaster. Nick Niven - his hair shiny, his bow tie jaunty - uses a feral smile and some really cracked charisma to get pretty much everything he wants. Aaron Himelstein's Babe is all misfit awkwardness, too brainy not to see how Dickie is playing him but too lonely and too Dickie-besotted to change course.

Evan Henerson, (818) 713-3651

evan.henerson@dailynews.com

review>

DICKIE & BABE: THE TRUTH ABOUT LEOPOLD & LOEB

>Where: 2nd Stage Theatre, 6500 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood.
>When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; through March 30.
>Tickets: $22 to $28. (323) 661-9827, www.TheBlank.com.
>In a nutshell: As inevitable and icy cold as its two subjects.