Knot Nice

IF YOU thought Rope was just a classic Alfred Hitchcock movie think again, because it saw its first performance on the London stage in 1929. Now it has been revived by Quincy House Theatricals under Oded Salomy's direction.

Rope

Written by Patrick Hamilton

Directed by Oded Salomy

At the Quincy House Dining Hall

The play itself has all the makings of a consummate thriller. Two ivy-leaguers--William Brandon (Tom Tremoulet) and Charles Granillo (Adam Selipsky)--have murdered a fellow undergrad, who just happens to be their professor's son, and stuffed the body in a trunk. Brandon and Granillo have no real motives for the crime. They do it for the sheer thrill of murder, coupled with their own arrogance and plenty of neo-Nietszchean philosphizing.

Convinced of their superior intellect, the murderers plot a dastardly proof of their innocence: they invite their victim's father to a dinner party and serve the food on the very trunk in which they've hidden the body. Unluckily for them, though, they've left a little piece of the rope they used to strangle their victim dangling from the lid of the trunk.

In directing Rope, Salomy makes good use of the play's abundant black humor, realizing that we can only be terrified by the play's conclusion if we have laughed a bit on the way there.

EVERYONE'S favorite character has to be Rupert Cadell (Laith Zawawi), the cynical intellectual who has been a mentor to Brandon since childhood, and who immediately suspects the cruel joke behind the dinner party. Zawawi plays Rupert as a hunched, scowling cripple with knitted brows, a vaguely Rumanian accent and an acerbic tongue. At times light-heartedly teasing, at others blazing with intensity, Zawawi holds the entire production together.

The rest of the cast can't match Zawawi's power, but special mention goes to Tom Tremoulet for creating an elegantly arrogant yet ultimately insecure Brandon. Valerie Beck is also superb as the tipsy, irreverent flapper Leila Arden. Adam Selipsky was less successful at portraying the weak, drunken Granillo, turning to over-acting at times--it is hard to imagine a college kid literally shrieking with nerves. And Charlie Kempf was guilty of a touch of woodenness, even in the role of the basically awkward and wooden Kenneth Raglan, the varsity athlete.

One of Salomy's challenges in mounting Rope must have been its unlikely theater space--the Quincy House Dining Hall is noisy, small, long, flat, awkward to light and outfitted with uncomfortable chairs. Salomy and crew overcome the obstacles well with effective platforms and lighting. Since all of its action takes place during a short span of time in Brandon's New York apartment, Rope adapts well to the close confines of the small stage.

Salomy took some liberties with the script, with mixed results. The inclusion of readings from De Quincey's satiric essay "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" and from the New York Times' grisly converage of a related 1924 murder gave the plot additional credibility. But his decision to play the last scene with alternate endings only weakens a climactic curtain.

Salomy also turns Brandon and Granillo from generic Ivy Leaguers into Harvard students and adapts their lingo appropriately. While all this is amusing, there is no real need for it.

This Quincy House production is sometimes hilariously funny, sometimes macabre, but always lively and entertaining. Go see Rope--with the new Interhouse restrictions, it may be the best reason you'll ever have to visit Quincy House's Dining Hall.