Daily Telegraph, 19 July 1993, by Robert Gore-Langton "The Arts: Murder for the hell of it THEATRE A thriller in Chichester that is a must for the West End" ----------------------------------------------------------- Patrick Hamilton's 1929 play *Rope*, currently being revived at the Minerva Theatre in Chichester, is a must for the West End. This deliciously creepy entertainment is about two Oxford undergraduates, Brandon and Granillo, who murder a fellow student for the hell of it and pack the corpse in a chest on which they later serve a light supper to guests, among them their victim's father. Keith Baxter's inspired production establishes the homosexual element fair and square. In the opening we see the students nakedly entwined with the dead body of the victim as if the murder were committed after some grotesque orgy. After guilty whisperings in the dark, the lights finally go up on their expensive Mayfair flat, complete with manservant and decorated with Michelangelo statuettes and other give-away gay details. From the opening moment you realise just how inadequate and boring Hitchcock's film of the play is, much as one loves James Stewart. Here you have a thriller with a real intellectual and moral backbone, which condemns the crime while exploring its sexual and psychological attraction. The killers' nemesis is introduced early on as a guest, a limping war-wounded poet, an aesthete with depression (superbly played with camp affectation by Anthony Head), starts to probe, horrified at his growing suspicions. But it is the central performances that grab your attention. Alexis Denisof plays the panicky, hair-creamed Granillo, who tries to drown his guilt in the whisky decanter, while John Barrowman is the mastermind Brandon, whose dapper good looks conceal a hideous deformity of character. Vanity, the sin of pride, is their mutual downfall. Theatrically taut, this is, above all, a beautifully written play--the poet-sleuth's descriptions of the London and night and of the consequences of Granillo and Brandon's act of murder are truly memorable. The noose waits for the killers at the end, the one moment when this evening of Grand Guignol departs company from today's reality. Tickets: 0243 781312 ----------------------------------------------------------- Bentley's Bedlam http://www.BetsyDa.com/bedlam.html This website is for information and entertainment purposes only and is not intended to infringe on copyrights held by others.