A stage for suspense

Special Arrangement

A scene from the play Photo: Special Arrangement

Two theatre companies came together to present Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope

The two young men are not merely satisfied with murdering their classmate. They also stuff him in a chest, cover it with a cloth, place on it candles, and use it as a make-shift dining table to serve dinner for the family and friends of the dead man, to prove that they are smart enough to get away with the “perfect murder”. It isn’t surprising then that Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 Rope, presented on stage for the first time in Chennai by The Madras Players in association with Crea-Shakthi, offered riveting moments for the audience.

The play opens with a bright yellow light shinning through a table fan, slowly spinning at one end of the stage. Against the eerie shadow that falls on the opposite wall, Brandon (Prasanna Venkatesh) and Philip (Vaishwath Shankar) strangle their friend, David Kentley (Yugesh R V). Then, to “make their work of art a masterpiece”, the arrogant Brandon insists on throwing a dinner party; the guest list includes David’s father, Mr. Kentley ( P.C. Ramakrishna), David’s fiancé, Janet (Priyanka Rajagopalan) and Rupert Cadell (Sarvesh Sridhar), their brilliant housemaster from prep school. The tension is interspersed with social comedy during the party scene, making the suspense rise and fall.

What is exciting are the opposing mindsets of the two “partners in crime” — while one is confident and cold-blooded, the other is reluctant and scared. Prasanna offers some compelling moments as the former, but doesn’t entirely explore the scope of his charming, yet repulsive character. Vaishwath, as the latter, sweats and shakes and puts on a memorable performance — his escalating fear is palpable, and sends the audience to the edge of their seats. The original screenplay includes a homosexual subtext, which the director makes no allusion to — it is perhaps because of this that the deep bond between the two lead characters, which would be required for them to come together for such an act, is not adequately portrayed.

P.C. and Sarvesh make sweeping entrances, and with their powerful stage presence, hold the attention of the audience with ease. Priyanka, however, runs through her dialogues, and does not do justice to her role. The intricately-designed sets (Victor Paulraj) and originally-composed music (Hamsini Balasubramanian) offer the play an edge. The backstage work is worth a mention, with light and sound cues being spot-on.

Rope is a psychological crime thriller in which the identities of the murderers are revealed right as the play begins. So what makes it an engaging watch is the unfurling suspense of whether the two men are indeed brilliant enough to get away with their crime. Director Abhinav Suresh gets this right — though some scenes could have been tighter and tenser, the play still successfully grips the audience.

Their motive for murder, too, is interesting — it is credited to the concept of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, and debates the philosophy of one’s superiority over another. In this play, this concept is used merely as a plot driver, and does not aim to offer any food-for-thought or evoke introspection. While the play was not all it could have been, it still made for an exciting watch.