The Times, 13 July 1993, by Jeremy Kingston
"Thrills at Chichester but stilted didacticism on the London 
Fringe - Knot for the faint-hearted"
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The title is a master stroke: simple, suggestive, scary--
though an actual rope hardly figures in the action. If 
innocent victim Ronald has actually been garotted by his 
erstwhile Oxford friends, Brandon and Granillo, the murder 
weapon escaped my notice. But this may have been because 
Keith Baxter directs the scene with all three men naked in a 
half-light, their limbs languorously entwined in front of a 
sturdy wooden chest. Inside this article of furniture 
Ronald's body will be dumped, and on top of it the urbane 
Brandon will serve a light supper to a select party that 
includes Ronald's gentle father.

In Hitchcock's film the rope features in several close-ups, 
chiefly when tied round a parcel of books, but it could be 
that the rope Patrick Hamilton had in mind when he wrote the 
play was the hangman's.

The opening tableau of naked youth declares boldly what 
Hamilton left to be deducted by those who, in 1929, knew 
enough to do so. I would have preferred Baxter to leave the 
opening as the author wrote it because the play's focus is 
not sex but crime: a murder done to convince two rich young 
men that they are above the constraints of ordinary morality 
and clever enough to get away with it. Brandon (John 
Barrowman) is hard, dominant and seemingly in control of his 
feelings, Granillo (Alexis Denisof) malleable and jittery. 
These two actors persuasively suggest the panic being held 
back, behind the smiling or sour mask of bravado.

The suspense quickly takes a tight grip. Will one of the 
guests open the chest? Will Brandon's puzzling friend Rupert 
guess what has happened? How will he react? Baxter ably 
screws up the tension in the scenes where characters talk, 
deceive and unwisely take risks, but he makes the gaps 
between events just as thrilling--notably the scene where 
Rupert, alone on the stage, limps painfully from chair to 
sofa, peering at a theatre ticket which is the only tangible 
clue. The dread that he might be interrupted, the sense of a 
terrier-like mind at work, made this critic's heart go pit-
a-pat.

Simon Higlett's set adds to the sense of alarm. The acting 
area does not symmetrically fill the pentagon available to 
it; the ceiling climbs at a disconcerting angle. If this is 
Mayfair it is the twisted Mayfair of an unsound mind.

The character of Rupert Cadell is a long way from the 
obviously straight guy James Stewart created for the film. 
Anthony Head builds from the cool, acerbic lines of the text 
a vivid portrait of a man adrift from the throng, dandyish, 
Byronic.

The initial impression is affected and willowy; the first 
cigarette he smokes is green. But he is the only character 
Hamilton equips with a past, and the solidity this brings 
gives weight to his speech at the party's climax. Head is 
splendid here, from the sob that escapes him as he lifts the 
chest's lid to the cogent, passionate outrage he expresses, 
physically damaged but morally incorruptible. A gripping 
evening.



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