Rope

Stage Troupe's third mainstage of the spring season is Patrick Hamilton's Rope. Made famous by Alfred Hitchock's 1948 film adaptation, Patrick Hamilton's Rope is a murder mystery told in reverse: the killers, their victim, and their motivations are immediately revealed to the audience. Brandon and Charlie are two undergraduates who, inspired by the musings of Friedrich Nietzsche, kill a fellow classmate for the sheer thrill of it; they feel they are intellectually superior to the feeble-minded and capable of pulling off the perfect murder. What follows is a most macabre dinner party attended by the victim's friends and family in which the guests dine upon a chest containing the cadaver. As the night wears on, the resolve of the murderers begins to crack, and the underlying flaws in their intellect reveal their true ugliness and become their undoing. A classic suspense thriller, Rope casts a damning light on the disturbed resolve of men who feel it appropriate to kill merely for the sake of killing.