Rope

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Actors Co-op
Through October 28

Rope, Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 suspense thriller at Actors Co-op, commences with an electrifying moment — the sort of cleverly crafted theatrics one might expect from director Ken Sawyer. In a pitch-black theater, the soft strains of a popular love ballad (“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”) can be heard. Suddenly, a blazing white light (design by Matthew Richter) comes up on one man maniacally strangling another. The lights go down again; when they return, the victim has disappeared. We soon learn that his remains have been stuffed into a wooden chest which the murderer Wyndham Brandon (Burt Grinstead), an arrogant upper-class Brit, perversely plans to use as the buffet table for a party he’s hosting later on in the evening. The guests include the victim’s father (Carl Johnson) and aunt (Elizabeth Herron), whose attendance at the fete creates for Brandon an especially malevolent delight.

Unfortunately, this harbingering moment of campy thrills is one of only a couple of high points in a rather pedestrian evening. Though Grinstead invests his enormous reserves of energy and skill into this supercilious villain, and elsewhere there are able supporting performances, these efforts aren’t enough to compensate for Hamilton’s cliched, outdated dialogue and wooden characters.

Homoerotic in undertone, the plot is loosely inspired by the real-life Leopold-Loeb case in 1924, in which two privileged young men attempted to commit the “perfect” murder in order to demonstrate to themselves their “superiority” to the common run of mortal. Brandon’s co-conspirator is Charles Granillo (David Huynh), a nervous delicate-featured man whom Brandon dominates entirely (at one point he slaps Granillo several times for an oversight that might lead to their discovery). The person most likely to be suspicious — and so he is —is one of their guests, Rupert Cadell (Donnie Smith), a foppish poet nonetheless a good deal cannier than any of the other dim or shallow guests.

These characters, including Cadell, spend a lot of time making the frivolous small talk we’ve come to associate with lightweight British plays involving the leisured class, and Sawyer’s ensemble work hard at mimicking the accents and mannerisms of such. Though they manage this respectably well, they rarely rise above the vacuity of their roles. The exception is Huyhn, whose intense performance remains constant throughout. A palpable fear of discovery stalks his angst-ridden murderer, and the quiet strength of this portrayal becomes the narrative’s sole truthful anchor.

Actors Co-op Crossley Theatre, 1760 N. Gower St., Hollywood; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 p.m.; through Oct. 28; www.ActorsCo-op.org or (323) 462-8460. Running time: 90 minutes with no intermission.