Friday 16 March 2018

Theatre: Rope.......



Presented by Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch and New Wolsey Theatre.

A chilling and spine-tinglingly gripping thriller by Patrick Hamilton.

Two well-bred young men murder a fellow Oxford student just for the fun of it. Placing the corpse in a wooden box, they invite a group of friends over to their Mayfair apartment – including the loving mother of the boy they’ve just killed. Supper is served on the chest holding the gruesome contents. But one of their guests is starting to become suspicious…

Will this daring pair get away with their cat and mouse games?
Based on a 1920’s real life case, this dark classic, brilliantly evoking a jazz age generation, was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1948 and remains to this day one of the most tightly coiled of thrillers.


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Hmmm well we didn't find it chilling or spine-tinglingly gripping at all. 
I'm sure Alfred Hitchcock used the very long pauses, or the non-stop crossing the stage to light a cigarette only to cross the stage to put it out in an ashtray to build nervous tension, but here it just seemed to drag everything out for the sake of it. And if they'd actually consumed as much whisky as they were drinking liquid from that decanter then at least three of the characters would have been completely comatose! 

My friends and I did all agree but I do think I was probably more critical because I took a nasty tumble on my way into the theatre on uneven ground and consequently sat through the performance with a very painful knee!

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