By Margaret S. Hamilton
“Because,
dear Brandon, that sort of murder would not be a motiveless murder at all. It
would have a quite clear motive. Vanity. It would be a murder of vanity.” Rope,
Act II, p. 63
On
Valentine’s Day, the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music staged
a remake of a 1929 play, “Rope,” by Patrick Hamilton, which was originally
performed in London. In 1948, Alfred Hitchcock transformed the play into a
psychological thriller, “Rope.” I’ve not seen the Hitchcock movie, but I did
find the original 1929 play in the Cincinnati Hamilton County library system.
Hamilton’s
play is based on the horrific 1924 murder of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks in
suburban Chicago. The killers were two university students, Nathan Leopold and
Richard Loeb, who were seeking the thrill of a perfect crime. Clarence Darrow
defended the two murderers, securing life sentences instead of the death
penalty.
In the
original “Rope,” two arrogant young men, Brandon and Granillo, strangle Oxford
University classmate, Ronald Kentley, with a rope, and hide his body in a trunk
in their London drawing room. They invite friends and Kentley’s father for
dinner, encouraging their guests to put their plates and glasses on the trunk.
Rupert Cadell, their former teacher, suspects the truth, opens the trunk to
reveal Ronnie’s body, and then summons law enforcement with a policeman’s
whistle. Brandon and Granillo’s perfect murder, exhibiting their intellectual
superiority, will be the cause of their execution by hanging.
CCM
graduate Amy Berryman teamed up with faculty member Brant Russell to “adapt”
the original play into a more modern time and place: college winter break,
2000, in a suburban Columbus, Ohio McMansion. Two college students, Brandon and
Granillo, strangle Ronnie, a former high school film club member, and hide her
body in a large trunk in the family room. Other members of the film club arrive
for a reunion, which will include viewing a remastered DVD of Hitchcock’s
“Psycho.” The college students party and dance, with lots of drunken banter
about the film industry and the roles they plan to play in their future
careers.
Two women,
a university teaching assistant and a local college student hired to serve the
meal, note the inconsistencies in the narrative about the missing student. As
the curtain falls, they lift the trunk lid.
The CCM
production was fast paced and the acting excellent. The reasoning behind
Ronnie’s murder was never explained, nor was the relationship between the two
murderers. The set—a well-researched millennium family room and adjoining
kitchen, encompassed the stage.
I enjoyed
the CCM production, as did the college students who filled the audience. “Rope”
was an ambitious student production, successfully updated from a horror-filled
twenties drawing room drama to a 2000s family room drama, during the years of
DVDs, dial-up modems, and wall phones.
Readers
and writers, have you seen a modern adaptation of an early twentieth century
play?
Home - The Official Website of Margaret S.
Hamilton
Margaret
S. Hamilton is the author of forty short stories and the first two books in the
Jericho Mysteries series.
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