Playwright Patrick Hamilton | Adaptations Rope (1948), Rope | |
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Rope is a 1929 British play by Patrick Hamilton. In formal terms, it is a well-made play with a three-act dramatic structure that adheres to the classical unities. Its action is continuous, punctuated only by the curtain fall at the end of each act. It may also be considered a thriller whose gruesome subject matter invites comparison to the Grand Guignol style of theatre. Samuel French published the play in 1929.
Contents
Plot and setting
The play is set on the first floor of a house in Mayfair, London in 1929. The story, thought to be based loosely on the Leopold and Loeb murder case, concerns two young university students, Wyndham Brandon and Charles Granillo (whom Brandon calls "Granno"), who have murdered fellow student Ronald Kentley as an expression of their supposed intellectual superiority. At the beginning of the play they hide Kentley's body in a chest. They proceed to host a party for his friends and family at which the chest containing his corpse is used to serve a buffet.
Production history
Rope was first presented by The Repertory Players in a Sunday night try-out production at the Strand Theatre, London, on 3 March 1929. The following month the play opened in the West End at the Ambassadors Theatre on 25 April 1929. The production ran for six months. Retitled Rope's End, the first Broadway production opened at the John Golden Theatre (then called the Theatre Masque) on 13 September 1929. On 16 December 2009, a revival of Rope began at the Almeida Theatre in London, in a production directed by Roger Michell.
Strand Theatre
Ambassadors' Theatre
Directed by Reginald Denham.
The 1929 Broadway production
Directed by Reginald Denham
Film and TV adaptations
The play was first broadcast on experimental live television by the BBC, on 8 March 1939. It was adapted by Hamilton, produced by Dallas Bower, and used long takes. Director Alfred Hitchcock later said he saw (or heard about) the long takes of this television production and was inspired to attempt a feature film version. Another version was broadcast on the British commercial network ITV in 1957. In different roles, Dennis Price appeared in both versions. A version was made for Australian television in 1959, and aired as part of the Shell Presents series A different version for Australian television aired in 1957.
In Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film version, Rope, Hitchcock, Hume Cronyn, and Arthur Laurents made some changes to the original stage play. The setting is relocated to 1940s New York City and the names of all of the characters, with the exception of Rupert Cadell, are altered. Quiet Mrs. Debenham became cheerful Mrs. Atwater. The murder victim is renamed David Kentley. In the original play, Rupert Cadell is a 29-year-old First World War veteran who walks with a stick. He was a teacher of Brandon and Granillo when they were at school. In the film, Cadell is played by James Stewart, who was forty at the time. In this version, Cadell had been the teacher of Brandon Shaw, Philip Morgan, Kenneth Lawrence, and David Kentley, and is currently a publisher. Hitchcock's is the only feature film version of the play to-date.
In 1983 Rope was dramatised as a BBC Radio 4 Drama for Saturday Night Theatre starring Alan Rickman as Cadell.