Sunday Express, 24 April 1994, by Ned Sherrin
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The age of miracles has not passed. In his revival of 
Patrick Hamilton's *Rope* (Wyndham's) director Keith Baxter 
revitalises the old war-horse as surely as Stephen Daldry 
at the National breathed life in to *An Inspector Calls*--
and with less fuss.

What Baxter has done with an opening male nude tableau 
(beautifully lit by Bill Bray against Simon Higlett's 
subtly expressionist set), and a feral, gay clinch in the 
last act, is to reinvent the play for the nasty Nineties.

It becomes Pinter with a punch, funny, stylish, pregnant 
with pauses, wrenched into today yet perfectly in period.

The melodrama is cherished on its own terms and we are 
alerted to every twist in the Grand Guignol plot, every 
spring in the mousetrap which is Hamilton's original 
structure.

The better you know the story (boys kill boy; boys invite 
victim's father to dine off chest containing corpse; war-
scarred poet suspects) the more you are reminded what a 
mess the Master of Suspense, Hitchcock, made of the movie.

One of this director's secret weapons is his impeccable 
casting. He did well when the play started at Chichester.

For once the replacements are even better and on all the 
players he has imposed a controlled pace and a sense of 
style rarely achieved these days. Anthony Head's poet is a 
bravura display. He speaks the famous London at night 
speech beautifully.

As one killer, Tristan Gemmil's dark authority, 
narcissistic menace and ability to mine for a laugh, chase 
memories of a young Olivier; and James Buller, as the 
other, lapses convincingly into hysteria.



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