The New Group opened “Rope” Off-Broadway on Tuesday, Nov. 3, with Cameron Monaghan and Corey Fogelmanis as Princeton grad students who murder a classmate, in an adaptation that makes the killers’ romantic relationship explicit. Gordon Greenberg’s adaptation, directed by Scott Elliott, “makes their fraught affair pretty obvious from the start,” Michael Sommers wrote in New York Stage Review.
Monaghan plays Garrett Stern and Fogelmanis plays Nate Singer, and it’s 1957 in their Turtle Bay apartment, where dinner gets served on top of the trunk hiding the body. “Secret gay lovers Garrett and Nate are ready to throw a dinner party,” Kyle Turner wrote in New York Theatre Guide.
(More Off-Broadway is on the way: the drag parody “Diana” returns to SoHo Playhouse Dec. 2, and Tilda Swinton starts “Man to Man” at the Lucille Lortel in February.)
The Cast of ‘Rope’ Off-Broadway
The New Group’s cast list pairs these six actors with the characters gathering at Garrett and Nate’s dinner party.
Cameron Monaghan as Garrett Stern
Monaghan, who played Ian Gallagher on Showtime’s “Shameless,” told TheaterMania that Garrett “doesn’t see himself as a monster.” He sees a pragmatist. “He views the world through the lens of eat or be eaten, kill or be killed,” Monaghan said.
He recalled seeing clips of Alfred Hitchcock’s film, and Greenberg’s script won him over. “I was amazed how Gordon had revitalized the work, and how all the ideas in the script were bold and in the forefront,” Monaghan said.
Corey Fogelmanis as Nate Singer
Fogelmanis, in his New York stage debut, told BroadwayWorld that love is the only thing that explains Nate. “I can’t see a reason why Nate would do this if it wasn’t for that love and that connection,” he said. Garrett’s tenderness comes with strings, as Fogelmanis sees it. “I think the only times that Garrett is affectionate with Nate is when he wants something,” he said.
Jason Butler Harner as Rupert Cadell
Harner plays Rupert Cadell, whom Pete Hempstead of TheaterMania called “Garrett’s former professor and current side piece.” Jonathan Mandell of New York Theater caught “an intriguing if faint suggestion that Garrett has been warped by the tyranny of the closet.”
Elizabeth Gillies as Leila Arden
Gillies plays Leila Arden. She joins Monaghan and Fogelmanis in the six-person company announced for the production.
Graham Phillips as Richard Raglan
Phillips plays Richard Raglan in Greenberg’s adaptation, which moves the story to 1957 Manhattan.
James Waterston as Judge Kentley
Waterston plays Judge Kentley, the dead classmate’s father.
From Leopold and Loeb to Hitchcock’s 1948 Censors
Patrick Hamilton’s “Rope” opened at London’s Ambassadors Theatre on April 25, 1929, according to its licensor, and reached Broadway that September as “Rope’s End.” Hamilton “denies that he was influenced by the history of Leopold and Loeb,” Time reported in its review that month.
Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy young Chicagoans, killed 14-year-old Bobby Franks in May 1924, and each got life plus 99 years after Clarence Darrow defended them, Britannica says. The new production’s casting announcement still calls Hamilton’s play “inspired by the Leopold and Loeb murder case.”
Hitchcock’s 1948 film, his first in Technicolor, cast John Dall and Farley Granger as the killers, Brandon and Phillip. “We also got a possible flavor in some of the dialogue that a homosexual relationship existed between Brandon and Phillip,” Production Code censor Joseph Breen wrote in a letter quoted by Slashfilm.
Greenberg’s killers express their sexual relationship “in ways that Hamilton and film screenwriter Arthur Laurents could never have gotten past the censors,” Hempstead wrote. Greenberg directed a reading of the adaptation at Classic Stage Company on March 9. That script “resets the action to 1957 Manhattan,” the company’s listing said.
‘Rope’ Off-Broadway Reviews: A Banger or ‘Skip Rope’?
Lane Williamson of Exeunt NYC called the show “another banger” for The New Group. “Monaghan is commanding and seductive as Garrett, with an undeniable presence that anchors the play,” Williamson wrote. Turner praised “a marvelously twisted performance from Cameron Monaghan,” too.
Others weren’t buying it. Sommers gave “Rope” two stars out of five and wrote that its tension “never grows sufficiently taut.” “So long, suspense,” Hempstead wrote. Mandell’s verdict was just as short: “Hitchcock this is not.”
Ron Fassler of TheaterPizzazz wrote that his frustrations with the production “are best summed up by saying, ‘Skip Rope.'”
“Rope” plays through Dec. 6, with post-show talkbacks after the Nov. 4 and Nov. 18 evening performances and an open-caption show Nov. 11, according to The New Group’s calendar.
