The Herald (Glasgow), 15 February 1994, by Ian Black
"Erotic thrills *Rope*, Theatre Royal, Glasgow"
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THE brooding eroticism which permeates this tense thriller 
is keyed by the opening scene in which two murdering and gay 
undergraduates are entwined naked with their victim to the 
accompaniment of huge clanging piano chords and then the 
deadest of dead blackouts I have experienced in a theatre. 

The set is a thing of mind-bogglingly schizophrenic angles 
which forces the mind along strange pathways and enhances 
the behavioural traits of this loathsome duo of would-be 
Nietzschean supermen wonderfully well. 

The play is very well served by the performers, with 
Tristian Gemmill all cream -suited petulence and psychotic 
danger as Wyndham Brandon and James Buller full of darting-
eyed funk as the other killer, but the performance of the 
evening was undoubtedly that of Anthony Head, he of coffee-
ad fame, revealed here as an outstanding actor. 

As the threads of the story spin themselves into the rope of 
retribution, Head, as the war-damaged and fashionably 
cynical poet, plays what could have been a caricature (he 
has a limp and a cane) to perfection. 

There is humour aplenty, most of it of the deliciously 
horrific kind. As the assembled party, including the 
victim's unknowing father, dine on the chest which contains 
the body, Brandon says to the father: "You sit at the head", 
provoking shocked giggles from the audience. 

Anthony Head's foppish Rupert, as he gives vent to the 
outrage he feels at their callousness, speaks for society, 
but the struggle he had to do it betrays the fascination 
with evil which has become such an integral part of that 
society. 

The loud applause justified both the writing and the acting.  


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