ROPE, a play

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

                                            The set for "Rope", a 2000 family room, was built on the stage