Rope (play)

1929 play by Patrick Hamilton

Rope, retitled Rope's End for its American release, is a 1929 English play by Patrick Hamilton. It was said to be inspired by the real life murder of 14 year old Bobby Franks in 1924 by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. 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. Samuel French published the play in 1929.

The play is set on the first floor of a house in Mayfair, London in 1929. The story 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 locked chest containing his corpse is used to serve a buffet. Suspicion arises among the guests as to the content of the chest. After the party, one guest, a former professor of the murderers, returns and contrives to open the chest. He is shocked and ashamed that they have acted in response to his own declarations of amorality. The play ends with this quandary unresolved.

Rope was first presented by The Repertory Players in a Sunday night try out production at the Strand Theatre, London, on 3 March 1929. 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 the 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.