Give them enough Rope
Posted on 17th March 2025
Although Rope is probably best known as Hitchcock’s audacious, single-take experiment, it was originally a stage play that the famous director took liberties with, not least relocating the action to New York. The original play is set in Mayfair and was written by Patrick Hamilton, the man who bequeathed the term “gaslighting” to the English-speaking world. The Corn Hall only recently hosted The Silence of Snow, an examination of Hamilton’s tortured life and mind, so it was fascinating to see a product of that mind, with the Red Herring Theatre Company offering a rare chance to see the original play.
Director Lee Johnson’s reverence for the text is clear both from the studied performances he has drawn from his cast and the decision to present the play in full. I’d have been tempted to make a few nips and tucks to help move things along, but I have to admire the ambition of presenting the play in such an uncompromising manner. Bold too, was the decision to play it in the round. Fellow audience members, constantly in your eyeline, served as a reminder that we were watching a heighted version of reality. Rope is, after all, the tale of two men who murder a third for the thrill of it, after which their invited guests literally dine out on the victim’s ersatz coffin.
Played out in real time, this nightmarishly nihilistic conceit was brought to the fore by Vanessa Mcauley’s wickedly provocative Brandy Wyndham, a wittily reassigned Wyndham Brandon in this gender-blind production. Theodore Bidmead’s Grano was a suitably diffident partner in crime, while Harry Quirk and Olivia Knight offered lively support as their witless dinner guests. Rupert Cadel also underwent a sex change, and while I’m guessing this has more to do with the available pool of performers than artistic choice, Nancy Anne’s stoic, boozy Ruth did much of the heavy lifting in the final act, bringing a fresh perspective to the closest the play offers to a righteous voice.
The suggestion that Brandy was inspired by Ruth’s world view is one of several complex themes running through a play that is as much philosophical rumination as thriller. At times it felt like Samuel Becket redrafted by Alan Bennett, or perhaps the other way round, and while I can’t say I share Johnson’s unbridled enthusiasm for the play, it’s at the very least a fascinating curio. Both ahead of its time and of its time, it is both audacious and dated, occupying a unique space that defies ready categorisation. Plaudits aplenty are therefore due to Red Herring for bravely tackling such a challenging work.