Rope

Synopsis

Brandon is prepared to go to any lengths to inject some excitement into his life. When he and his impressionable friend Granillo murder a fellow student, they place the body in a wooden chest. In a macabre twist the pair invite some acquaintances, including the dead man's father, to a party where the chest and its gruesome contents serve as a supper table. As the horror and tension reaches a climax, will the two murderers' nerve hold out or will the suspicious Rupert Cadell discover their ghastly secret? Premiered in 1929, and later adapted as a film by Alfred Hitchcock.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 17 December 2009

Patrick Hamilton’s macabre 1929 psychological thriller Rope is best known as the Alfred Hitchcock movie, but the relocation to New York and the celebrated continuous long takes drained the piece of much of its tension and flintiness.

Roger Michell’s revival at the Almeida is the best I’ve seen and renews the shock element not only in the freshness of the casting but also in the re-arrangement of the theatre: there are new seats, and a gallery, behind the stage, where I sat, creating an octagonal “in the round” acting area and the sort of focus Michell found in the first Cottesloe staging of Blue/Orange.

The last West End revival, over ten years ago, played up the homoerotic element in the relationship between Wyndham Brandon and Charles Granillo, who are here seen stuffing the corpse in a trunk in a smoky Mayfair prologue. Their crime was inspired – though Hamilton always denied this – by the Leopold and Loeb motiveless murder case in C...

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Latest User Review

Sally - 6 February 2010:

Well it seems that if you sat in the Circle, you could hear Carvell fine, but there were real problems in the stalls. Surely an actor should make sure he can be heard everywhere in the auditorium?!...

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