Rope, Canberra Rep, theatre 3

 

Patrick Hamilton's 1929 thriller has had very long legs for a thriller which is also very much of its time - in the post-war and post-Oscar-Wilde Trial era, when the bright young things partied seemingly unaware of the consequences, where fashion and behaviour broke from Victorian staidness and, after the Russian Revolution, new intellectual paradigms were being trialed all over the world. Hamilton's tense thriller reflects both the thoughts of its era and of its writer, a alcoholic with a distinct strain of melancholy, as he morphed a recent popular murder case into a story of power, ethics and thrills.

The basic setup, where we know going in that Brandon and Granillo have just committed murder and the challenge is to see how they will be caught, became the basis of every Columbo ever, and gives us the suspense of knowing more than those who are onstage at any one time (we even get a chance to see the vital clues being spotted by our amateur sleuth for the evening, war-veteran intellectual gadabout, Rupert Cadell, well in advance of them being presented to the villains). While the climax has Hamilton a little too fond of overly-long monologues (including a romantic tribute to the hour of 10:35 which is simultaneously gorgeous but feels self-indulgent), it pays off emotionally as it becomes apparent how the murder has effected those involved. 

Ed Wightman's production captures the classic thriller setpieces - tensions at near-discoveries, confrontations and near-escape - but also the emotional content that lies beneath - the disintegration of the two villains as they attempt to hide their crimes, the seemingly casual connections between the strangers they invite to a party over the chest containing a corpse, and the melancholy of a war survivor trying to live with what he's done in wartime. In a lush Quentin Mitchell set there's a strong sense of period and emotional temperature, as the cast regularly trek back and forth to the drinks cabinet in an attempt to maintain decorum that simultaneously slips away with each drink.

The two villains have the majority of stage time - Pippin Carrol's precise, fussy Brandon, obsessed with controlling what's going on, and Josh Wiseman's desperate Granillo, a bundle of nerves from the offset as he's all too aware what he's done and is falling apart trying to survive with that knowledge. Ryan Street's Rupert Cadell captures both the ennui and the inquisitiveness of the character - he's an imposing figure who constantly draws attention. As the more frivolous pair, Callum Wilson and Alex McPherson provide delightful light relief - Wilson is sweetly dunderheaded, while McPherson has the manner of a gadfly, her mind flipping around constantly in a world of small talk and gossip. Saban Lloyd Berrell as the father of the corpse, brought in as part of Brandon's plan to skirt with danger, provides suitable melancholy in his final moments but is also a strong solid presence, while Anne Freestone as the socially awkward aunt is hilarious in every brief statement and awkward flop into a chair. 

It's a rich evening of black comedy, intellectual drama, murderous thrills and twists and turns, giving an old-fashioned thriller new life on the stage. Absolutely worth catching.