Evening Standard, 12 July 1993, by Michael Arditti
"Perfect Passions"
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There are clearly two prerequisites if you wish to commit 
the perfect murder: take the pledge and don't take a 
partner--both of which Brandon and Granillo, the anti-heroes 
of Patrick Hamilton's *Rope*, disregard.

Quoting Nietzsche--in whose name more crimes must have been 
commited than that of any other philosopher--they cold-
bloodedly murder a fellow Oxford undergraduate and, then, in 
a macabre variant of Titus Andronicus, invite the boy's 
father, aunt and three friends to dine off the chest that 
contains his corpse. It's the first sign of the overweening 
arrogance that will give them away.

This marvellous play succeeds on three levels. On the first, 
the taut plot maintains the tensions of a classic thriller. 
On the second, the social comedy is placed in the hands of 
two bright young things straight out of Noel Coward. On the 
third, the moral dimension is explored through the character 
of a disillusioned poet, Rupert Cadell.

Smoking a green cigarette--in place of a green carnation--
and dropping aphorisms as sharp and polished as his 
fingernails, Rupert is a figure from the Wildean 1990s 
thrust into the 1930s. A casualty of the trenches, his sense 
of exclusion is blisteringly portrayed by Anthony Head. And 
yet, when confronted with a true "sin," both character and 
actor reveal unsuspected depths of passion.

Rupert rightly describes the murder as a sin, but one of the 
strengths of Keith Baxter's near-faultless production is 
that it allows us to hate the sin while loving the sinners. 
This is largely the result of two magnificent performances 
from John Barrowman and Alexis Denisof; the former belying 
any sentimental belief that physical beauty denotes beauty 
within.

Mr. Baxter orchestrates his effects superbly...every pause 
has resonance. He has a perfect sense of period, which never 
appears quaint, while taking a thoroughly modern line with 
the homoerotic subtext which, in  Barrowman and Denisof's 
committed performances, becomes overt lust. And yet, by 
bringing out Rupert's own sexual tastes, Mr. Head avoids any 
reactionary suggestion of "healthy" straight society 
condemning "kinky" gays.

My one quarrel with the production is that the naked, 
necrophiliac tableau with which is opens (delicately lit by 
Bill Bray) and the later hints of sexual strangulation both 
refute the idea of a "passionless, motiveless" murder. 
Otherwise, it is an invigorating antidote to Chichester's 
sophorific main-house programme, which must, definitely, 
transfer.

Caption: Blistering: Anthony Head as poet Rupert Cadell



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