Motiveless murder in Kenilworth

Buy photos » Brandon (Calum Speed) strangling Granillo (Dan Searles) as Rupert Cadell (Graham Underhill) looks on. Photo by Peter Weston.

AN APPARENTLY motiveless murder needs solving at Kenilworth's Talisman Theatre in Patrick Hamilton's Rope.

Two undergraduates have murdered a fellow student and placed his body in a chest in their dining room. That same evening the deceased's friends and family, including his father, are invited round to a tea party. As the evening progresses the perpetrators increasingly test their ingenuity and morality to the limit. Will any of their guests realise their wicked secret? Will they feel any remorse for their crime?

Hamilton based his play on a real contemporary case.

It presents a chilling anatomy of an apparently motiveless murder, and a snapshot of a jazz-age generation wallowing in privilege, booze, parties, a shallow obsession with fashion and films, and a desperate inner emptiness.

Directed by Chris Ward, Calum Speed and Dan Searles lead as the villainous undergraduates, Brandon and Granillo, cruelly playing and teasing the friends and family - Raglan (James Peakman), Leila Arden (Emma Searles), Sir Johnstone Kentley (Sandy Robertson), Mrs Debenham (Lynda Lewis), the foppish Cadell (Graham Underhill) and Sabot (Ryan Howkins).

Premiered in 1929, it was an immediate and enduring success. Alfred Hitchcock adapted it for film in 1948, moving the action to New York, with James Stewart as Rupert Cadell.

The production runs from February 6 to 11. For tickets, priced £6 (Monday), £8 (Tuesday to Thursday), £8.50 (Friday and Saturday), call the box office on 01926 856548.