The Times, 13 April 1994, by Kate Bassett
"No piece for the wicked"
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Has rigor mortis crept up on the murderers? The trouble 
with Keith Baxter's staging of *Rope*, Patrick Hamilton's 
vintage thriller, is that Brandon and Granillo, the 
homosexual lovers who we discover stuffing a beautifully 
relaxed corpse into an antique chest, seem to have turned 
into a couple of stiffs. They keep posing in a tableaux on 
items of furniture.

Tristan Gemmill (Brandon), speaking in monotonously sing-
song clipped tones, is too artificial even for the 1930s. 
In fact, quite a few of the cast are acting suspiciously. 
For example the butler (Roger Ennals) has a criminally bad 
French accent ("Ze tabble, sair?").

Anthony Head's Cadell is the saving grace of the evening. 
He hobbles around with a crippled foot and inner pain 
balanced by laid-back panache, a flash of sarcastic wit, or 
a probing question like a suddenly unsheathed swordstick. 
James Buller (Granillo) improves as he slugs back the 
whisky, becoming increasingly frantic.

But, for me, watching men doing Greek god impressions on 
the sofa does not get the adrenalin pumping. The staged 
nudity at the start is so crassly handled I had a nasty 
feeling I was attending the arthouse answer to the 
Chippendales. Nevertheless, with the victim naked, along 
with the two culprits, Baxter's production is the more dark 
for linking killing so clearly with sexual kicks.

There is some topical bite to *Rope* in its sland on 
murder. It does deal with the death of an Oxford University 
student and has a certain contemporary resonance concerning 
sadistic sexual acts that escalate into serious physical 
damage. Yet this play has dated. Isn't caricaturing upper-
class twits prancing around being perfect chumps a bit 
passˇ?

Meanwhile, the creak of melodrama is almost audible as 
Brandon cries "Damnation!" and spins around 180 degrees 
with all the naturalness of a dastardly string puppet in a 
tight corner.

There is suspense at points, but more often this production 
leaves you just hanging about. One is kept at the wake by 
close shaves and by watching Cadell turn from poet to 
private dick. 
But this breed of detective yarn can inspire a yawn today, 
especially when Hitchcock spilt the beans concerning the 
plot. Why pay good money for old rope?



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