Review: Rope

ROPE is structurally an upside down play, in that the climax is at the beginning: I had hardly sat down and tucked into my programme when the lights went out, two characters struggled on stage and dragged a dead body into a chest.

From the audience’s perspective, the play couldn’t be less of a murder mystery. The lights come up to reveal two Oxford undergraduates, Brandon and Granno bickering over their crime.

But whilst the audience is in on the secret, the other characters are ignorant, and it is this imbalance which winds the narrative up into a tighter and tighter coil of guilty suspense.

A dinner party is held at the crime scene, with the guests eating off the makeshift coffin.

We watch as they orbit the subject of the chest, which holds court in the middle of the stage as they stumble inadvertently close to the bone in their passing conversation.

The set is minimal: a few chairs and tables framing the hypnotic chest, with no scene changes necessary since we never leave the killers’ dining room.

The space in which the play is performed heightens this claustrophobia, with the room in the Union not only eerily similar to the inside of a treasure chest, but so packed with (full) seats that the audience were almost spilling onto the tiny stage.

This breathless tension echoed the acting. It was the simple plot that allowed for such forceful narrative momentum, but perhaps at the price of a more developed storyline.

The cast were tight and neat though, carrying the audience along a tightrope of anticipation with the force of their taut dialogue.

At times this nervous pace faltered slightly, with some lines cutting off the ends of others, but this actually added to the strained atmosphere.

The actors playing Brandon (Joe Prospero) and Cadell (Jared Fortune) were particularly noticeable in their mastery over tension; the acting was strong all round, with some comedic compliments provided by Sabot (Luke Rollason) and others.

The play thrives on its suspense, so it is unsurprising that Hitchcock adapted Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 original to film, set in New York.

However last night’s performance was very at home set in this tiny room in the heart of Oxford, where we could almost hear the secret, beating to be let out of its chest.