“Rope” at the Theatre at St. Clement’s (Photo: Monique Carboni)

In 1948, renowned playwright Arthur Laurents adapted Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 play Rope for none other than master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock. With its experimental single-take conceit and intricate staging, Hitchcock’s Rope is an enduring cinematic classic. Laurents and Hitchcock condense the action of Hamilton’s three-act play into a single, real-time dinner party eaten over a trunk that contains a dead body.

In January 2025, the source material – Hamilton’s Rope – entered the public domain, freeing it to be revived and adapted without need of permission or royalty. In October of that year, Jeffrey Hatcher was first out of the gate with an adaptation at Hartford Stage in Connecticut, but that version hasn’t made it to New York. 

Hamilton’s play is inspired by the then hot-off-the-presses murder trial of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two handsome, well-bred college students who kidnapped and murdered their teenage neighbor in 1924. Leopold and Loeb were also in a same-sex relationship, though the power dynamic between them has been much discussed. Did Loeb use his good looks to persuade Leopold to join him in a life of crime? For its time, it was a highly salacious case. No wonder that Hamilton jumped at the chance to dramatize it. Hamilton, Laurents, and Hatcher all heavily hint at the homosexual motivations between the central characters in Rope without explicitly identifying it.

With his current adaptation for The New Group, playwright Gordon Greenberg decides to go a different direction. In what might be the gayest play of the season, the killers – here named Garrett and Nate – sit in their underwear in the dark as the audience comes in. Already dismantling the thin veil of innuendo, they methodically assemble the room, complete with their clearly post-coital clothes strewn across the floor. As Garrett and Nate unroll a rug, slide windows and paintings into place, then re-dress, the stage has become their playspace. Garrett has invited guests over with the explicit purpose of playing a game over the dead body of their classmate, again locked in a trunk in the center of the room. 

Greenberg’s adaptation and Scott Elliott’s production are relentlessly horny, justifying the characters’ actions through their desire to fuck. And it’s far from implied. Greenberg shows us glimpses of the characters’ past, interrupting the real-time conceit that has been in place since Laurents and Hitchcock with flashes of prior interactions. Garrett and Nate, played by Cameron Monaghan and Corey Fogelmanis, are absolutely ravenous for each other – Nate, out of pure desire, Garrett, perhaps, for manipulative reasons. Elliott’s staging (with intimacy direction by UnkleDave’s Fight-House) does not shy away from their carnal hunger. Garrett and Nate make out with a jaw-smashing intensity, the kind of raw, passionate devouring I’ve rarely seen depicted (on stage at least), but absolutely how gay people make out. The beginnings of a sex scene at the play’s denouement also feel wildly authentic – a credit to the intimacy direction and the electrifying chemistry between Monaghan and Fogelmanis. 

But it’s not just the physical that makes this version of Rope so gay. Greenberg decides not to dance around it. They refer to each other with terms of endearment you wouldn’t use with your, let’s say, companion, only with your lover. At one point Garrett tells Nate to, “Show me your ass.” At another point, their professor, also invited to the party, asks them if they want a third! A third! Can you imagine Jimmy Stewart saying that?

It’s completely anachronistic to the play’s period, but somehow it actually works. Greenberg and Elliot have crafted this world where the suits are bespoke (thanks Catherine Zuber) and there’s rarely an un-lit cigarette, but the contemporary can seep in. Whatever these men were doing in private, we’re seeing it now as clearly as we’d see it today. Dispensing with the drawing room pleasantries, Greenberg is able to show how Garrett uses his body and his charm to climb the social ladder and use those who desire him for his own gain. Greenberg sort of absolves Nate of responsibility, just as some have questioned Leopold’s involvement in the murder. Maybe he was just there, horrified at what Garret/Loeb did. Regardless, the guilt consumes him as the night goes on, disappearing into his liquor glass. 

The delight of watching as the boys assemble designer Derek McLane’s living room, piece-by-piece, kicks the play immediately into high gear. This is not a typical box set – with just a few pieces of furniture and a disconnected fireplace and windows, the playing space feels both realistic and liminal, like it’s a place where people live, but that it could disappear at any second. And, given what transpires, it probably will. Jeff Croiter’s lighting design seamlessly navigates the flashbacks in Greenberg’s script as well as the various asides where the characters, novelistically, describe themselves to us. 

Elliott and Geoff Josselson Casting have assembled a top-tier ensemble of artists for this production. Monaghan is commanding and seductive as Garrett, with an undeniable presence that anchors the play. Next to him, Fogelmanis’ small frame and floppy hair slip naturally into his shadow, highlighting the hopelessness of Nate’s attachment to Garrett. Jason Butler Harner, as Professor Cadell, recalls nothing of Jimmy Stewart, but Greenberg’s version of the character doesn’t either. This Cadell is also hopelessly attracted to Garrett and Harner’s perpetually drunk, hang-dog performance carries the weight of this man’s poor choices.

Following their incredible revival of The Adding Machine earlier this year, The New Group has produced another banger. Their new permanent home at the Theatre at St. Clement’s is proving to be the perfect synthesis of space and company. With Rope, they have another audacious, stylish, and captivating production.