Boston’s True Crime Top Dogs Are Taking the Genre Where It Rarely Goes: The Stage

We are living in an era awash in true crime content. Podcasts and binge-able Netflix docuseries about heinous killings and the twisted people who carry them out are consistently huge hits. It’s the modern answer to the books and TV shows audiences have long enjoyed, and business is booming.

And now, the latest way to experience true crime sagas will hit Boston. Next week, fans of true crime will get a first-of-its-kind “immersive multi-sensory storytelling experience” when the live stage adaptation of the podcast Saints, Sinners, and Serial Killers debuts on Wednesday. The show is the handiwork of the prolific nonfiction duo (and frequent Boston contributors) Dave Wedge and Casey Sherman, whose resumé includes the best-selling true crime thrillers Hunting Whitey: The Inside Story of the Capture & Killing of America’s Most Wanted Crime Boss and The Last Days of John Lennon (a collab with author James Patterson).

They say viewers can expect to see an ensemble cast—among them Gary Tanguay (Don’t Look Up) and Alison Wachtler (Chappaquiddick)—act out scenes from their nonfiction work, much of which has already seen in TV and movie adaptations.

If that sounds like a pretty unusual way to present the familiar source material of real-life killers and other villains carrying out their dirty deeds, it is.

“The Boston theater scene has never experienced a show as intense as this one,” Sherman and Wedge say in a statement. “We’re bringing Whitey Bulger, Albert DeSalvo, and even the great John Lennon to the stage. We’re taking the audience on a thrill ride through our deep investigations into some of the most notorious crimes in American history.”