Spectator, 31 July 1993, by Sheridan Morley
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When Patrick Hamilton died 30 years ago, of drink and 
neglect among other ailments, Doris Lessing and Graham 
Greene were among those who wrote to the *Times* complaining 
of an unduly dismissive obituary, and pointing out that, had 
he written of Bloomsbury high life rather than Soho low 
life, he would have been acclaimed one of the greatest 
novelists of the century.

Since then, of course, Hamilton has been upwardly revalued, 
with one major biography and another on the way, but nothing 
does his reputation greater credit than Keith Baxter's 
breathtaking revival of *Rope* on Chichester's Minerva 
stage, one which urgently demands a West End transfer. 
Written and first staged in 1929, Hamilton's closet-murder 
drama was ah uge Thirties hit here and in America but then 
vanished totally, killed off by an inadequate Hitchcock film 
and the mistaken belief that the story was of the 
Leopold/Loeb murder in Chicago, which has been the source of 
many subsequent plays and films.

In fact, *Rope* was written before that murder was 
committed, and is a resolutely Belgravia story: two wealthy 
undergraduates murder a third, put his body in a trunk and 
invite his father to eat off it. All that happens as the 
curtain rises, for this is not a thriller or a whodunnit; 
rather it is a stunning psychological drama about gay 
killing, one given a terrible topicality by current serial 
murders around London. Baxter cannot have foreseen those; 
what he has understood is the timeless power of *Rope* to 
chll the spine, and in the casting of Anthony Head as the 
war-weary poet who thinks he can tolerate murder until 
confronted with one, we have the best-actor performance of 
this year. Around him, Baxter has assembled John Barrowman 
and Alexis Denisof as the killers for two more power-house 
performances in an evening of terrific and tremendous 
tension.



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