Rope

Rope is a psychological thriller for the stage. Gordon Greenberg has adapted Patrick Hamilton's 1929 play of the same name, and The New Group, the Off-Broadway company founded by Scott Elliott, is producing it as a world premiere and a limited engagement. Elliott directs.

The setup takes only a few lines to tell. Two young men who consider themselves cleverer than everyone around them commit a murder, convinced they will never be caught, and then host a dinner party in their own apartment. The food is laid out on a trunk, and the trunk holds the body. The audience knows from the start who the killers are, so the suspense comes from watching whether anyone at the table works it out.

The idea has a real-life root. Hamilton drew on the Leopold and Loeb case, in which two Chicago students, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, murdered a 14-year-old boy, Bobby Franks, in 1924, believing they could pull off a flawless crime. Murder, privilege, obsession and the pull of power are the themes this production sets out to explore.

Garrett Stern and Nate Singer are graduate students at Princeton, and the person they have killed is a classmate. In this version of the story Nate is Garrett's lover as well as his accomplice. Garrett takes the lead and keeps the evening under control, while Nate is the one who worries.

Their guests arrive at the Turtle Bay apartment. They include Rupert Cadell, the pair's former housemaster and an admirer of Nietzsche, along with Leila Arden and Richard Raglan. The characters also include Judge Kentley, the father of the dead young man. As the dinner goes on, Garrett steers the talk away from anything dangerous and works on Nate to keep him steady, while the guests slowly edge closer to the truth.

The New Group's materials place the story in the young men's apartment and give no year. Classic Stage Company's page for a March 2026 reading of the adaptation set it in Manhattan in 1957.

Hamilton's original is a three-act play in the well-made tradition. It keeps the classical unities, so the action runs continuously and pauses only when the curtain falls at the end of an act. The setting is a Mayfair house in London, in 1929.

Greenberg relocates the story to Manhattan and changes several names. The two killers, Wyndham Brandon and Charles Granillo in Hamilton's script, become Garrett and Nate. Leila Arden and Rupert Cadell keep their original names. Raglan is now Richard rather than Kenneth, and the dead man's father is a judge rather than Sir Johnstone Kentley. Nietzsche's ideas are referenced heavily in Greenberg's script, which suits a story about people who think they stand above ordinary rules.

As of October 2026, Cameron Monaghan plays Garrett Stern and Corey Fogelmanis plays Nate Singer. Jason Butler Harner plays Rupert Cadell, Elizabeth Gillies is Leila Arden, Graham Phillips is Richard Raglan and James Waterston is Judge Kentley.

Many of these actors are better known from screen work. As of October 2026, Monaghan is known for Shameless and the Star Wars Jedi video games, and Rope is his first full-length New York stage production. Fogelmanis, known for Girl Meets World, makes his Off-Broadway debut. Harner, a winner of an Obie Award, appeared in Ozark. Gillies, known for Victorious and Dynasty, starred Off-Broadway in Little Shop of Horrors in 2025, and Phillips played Zach Florrick on The Good Wife.

The Repertory Players gave it a Sunday-night try-out at the Strand Theatre in London on March 3, 1929. The West End run began at the Ambassadors Theatre on April 25, 1929, and lasted six months. On September 13, 1929, it reached Broadway under the title Rope's End, at the Theatre Masque, which is today the John Golden Theatre.

Alfred Hitchcock's film of 1948 is the only feature-length screen version. It stars James Stewart as Cadell, with John Dall and Farley Granger, and it moves the action to New York in the 1940s. The film unfolds in real time and is edited to look like a few long continuous takes. A 1983 BBC Radio 4 production featured Alan Rickman as Cadell, and the Almeida Theatre in London revived the play in 2009 under Roger Michell, with Bertie Carvel as Cadell and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Leila Arden.

Greenberg's adaptation was first heard at Classic Stage Company on March 9, 2026, in a one-night reading. The New Group production began previews on October 13, 2026, and its official opening is set for November 3, 2026. The building is a return for the company: St. Clement's was its main theater from 1999 to 2003, and after about a decade at the Pershing Square Signature Center it announced in November 2025 that it would make this theater its permanent home.