Hitchcock Without the Camera

“Everybody talks about committing the perfect crime, but nobody does it,” quips an urbane young murderer to his homosexual lover as the two prepare to follow their own perfect thrill-killing with the perfect final touch--serving dinner to their unwitting guests from atop a chest containing the body of their victim.

This sardonic exchange early on in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” epitomizes the combination of macabre humor and hubris that captured both the imagination and professional interest of PCPA Theaterfest director Jack Shouse when he came across the movie in a video rental store five years ago.

“I had never heard of it before,” Shouse recalls, “but I was blown away by it. It had everything--suspense, black comedy, philosophical depth. I immediately thought, ‘This would make a terrific piece for our theater.”’

On Thursday, that inspiration will become a reality as the first stage version of Arthur Laurents’ screenplay for “Rope” opens under Shouse’s direction at the outdoor Solvang Festival Theatre, followed by a move to the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts’ alternate venue at Santa Maria’s Marian Theatre at Allan Hancock College.

World premieres with “Rope’s” pedigree are rare coups for regional institutions such as PCPA, a theater arts training program whose productions feature a mix of conservatory students and professional resident and visiting artists.

Shouse’s ambitions would likely never have materialized were it not for the fortuitous assistance of Pat Hitchcock O’Connell, Alfred’s daughter, who at the time was living in Solvang and remains on the PCPA Foundation board of directors.

Shouse says he had previously approached O’Connell about staging a semi-operatic musical adaptation of “Psycho”--to which O’Connell’s reaction had been an emphatic “God, no.” But she was more receptive when Shouse approached her with his “Rope” concept.

“I thought it was a great idea,” O’Connell recalls, speaking by phone from her Thousand Oaks home. “I’ve always thought PCPA did some of the best plays with amateurs I’ve seen. I was happy to help.”

The shooting script by Laurents (with an uncredited assist from Ben Hecht) was not a published work, but O’Connell arranged to get performance rights from the Hitchcock estate. However, complications arose because Laurents’ script was itself an adaptation of a 1929 play, “Rope’s End,” by British playwright Patrick Hamilton. (Hume Cronyn adapted the play for Hitchcock, but bowed out before Laurents’ involvement.) With the help of her daughter, Katie Fiala, O’Connell negotiated the rights for the PCPA premiere with the Hamilton estate. Because the agreement stipulates performance in a teaching environment, it is unlikely the Hitchcock version of “Rope” will ever be seen in fully professional theatrical venues, Shouse says. “This may be people’s only opportunity to see it onstage.” Released in 1948, “Rope” (the director’s first film in color) was a commercial disappointment despite the starring attraction of James Stewart in the unlikely role of Rupert, the boys’ sarcastic former prep-school teacher who uncovers their crime.

Today, the film is remembered chiefly for its experimental technique, in which each 10-minute reel was shot in one continuous take. When each reel ran out, the camera would zoom in on an actor’s back to create a blackout to allow reloading of the camera. If a mistake occurred, the entire reel had to be reshot.

Unconventional as this approach may have been on film, it’s hardly exceptional for the stage, where every play is performed in one take. So why the compulsion to re-create “Rope” live?

“Because of the script,” Shouse answers without hesitation. “Arthur Laurents’ screenplay was brilliant--every line is character-driven and revelatory. The way he tells the story is so theatrically well-crafted that it works very well as a play--better, in some ways.”

The stagy quality of Hitchcock’s film was intentional. “My father had always wanted to film a stage play,” O’Connell recalls. “He never worked in the theater, but he was a great lover of plays. He and my mother used to go all the time, in London and in New York.

“Nevertheless, he waited until he had his own film company, because he didn’t want to risk anyone else’s money on an experiment. When he and Sidney Bernstein founded Transatlantic Pictures, they chose ‘Rope’ for their first movie.”

Shouse points out that certain aspects of the movie that seemed awkwardly restrictive on-screen--such as the way the action takes place in real time, on a single New York apartment set--become completely natural on stage.

Despite “Rope’s” theater-friendly script, Hitchcock’s highly cinematic use of the moving camera to direct the audience’s attention poses major challenges for a stage adaptation. “There are moments when a prop or a piece of furniture or a hand becomes the center of attention, rather than the person talking,” observes lighting designer Angeline Summers, who will transpose the script’s specified camera angles and pans into lighting effects that shape a scene’s focus and even its meaning.

One of Hitchcock’s notorious cameos will also be replicated with a neon silhouette visible through the killers’ apartment window. The most important reason for bringing “Rope” to the stage, Shouse says, is the enduring significance of the subject matter. “I’d always been fascinated by the Leopold and Loeb case [the 1924 case on which Laurents’ murderers, Brandon and Phillip, are implicitly based]. They were wealthy, handsome intellectuals who killed another boy simply as an experiment.”

In approaching these characters for the stage, Shouse explains, “what intrigued me was the combination of arrogance at their own intellectual superiority, their total lack of remorse and their homosexuality. They’re the ultimate outsiders. It’s so foreign to the way most of us think in terms of our place in society.”

Because vigorous censorship at the time precluded overt exploration in the film, the relationship between Brandon and Phillip was simply taken as a given in their interaction and circumstances, and in the way the other characters relate to them without judgment as a couple living quite openly together. Ironically, the ironclad Hollywood taboo produced a sophisticated and tolerant depiction of homosexuality.

While the PCPA staging will not depart significantly from that understated approach, the dynamics of the relationship will be more apparent onstage, Shouse says.

A key interpretive change Shouse and his cast made early on was to make it clear that Rupert, the boys’ former teacher, had once had an affair with Brandon, the mastermind of the pair. Although hinted at in Laurents’ dialogue, this dimension was never evident in Stewart’s portrayal. In the subsequent “Rear Window” and “Vertigo,” Hitchcock had great success coaxing darker sides from Stewart, but a homosexual, Nietzsche-spouting philosophy teacher was not in the actor’s repertoire.

“The film turned into a detective story,” maintains Tim Casto, who plays Brandon in the PCPA production, “and you miss a lot of the history--the emotional ties--between my character and Rupert. Brandon has a desperate need for Rupert’s approval. All along he’s been trying to impress and then surpass this mentor who he sees as a father figure.”

The onstage relationships will not be any more explicit than what was shown in the film. “We won’t be kissing or anything,” Casto explained. Nevertheless, he believes the emotional connections between Brandon, Rupert and Phillip can be made clearer onstage. “We can show dynamics that aren’t apparent during close-ups, when the characters are completely off-camera. Hopefully, we’re a little more fleshed out, character-wise.”

Alan Brooks, who plays Rupert, agrees. But he points out that an actor’s constant visibility while onstage also entails risks. “I can kill all the suspense just by looking at the chest at the wrong moment--the audience will think ‘Oh, he knows’ too early on. I have to pace showing what I know and when I know it. Hitchcock controlled this with the camera, but I have to be careful all the time I’m onstage.”

Rupert’s theory that the superior man is above conventional morality has disastrous consequences--it leads Brandon to conclude that his privileged position in life gives him license to commit murder.

“Rupert’s created his own little Frankenstein here,” Brooks says, “and in the end, his recognition of that is shattering, because he understands that he’s partly responsible for the murder.”

The finale brings Brandon to a turning point as well, Casto adds. “Brandon doesn’t know he’s a sociopath, he has to believe what he’s doing is right. Rupert’s reaction causes a pivotal moment where Brandon considers whether what he’s done is wrong.

“But in the end, he can’t relinquish the need to be right,” Casto says, laughing. “So he decides Rupert has betrayed him.”

“The difference between Rupert and Brandon is the crux of the play in a nutshell,” Shouse says. “It’s about philosophy versus ethics. Rupert can talk about a philosophy, but there’s a moral core in him that prevents him from acting on it. Brandon’s lack of ethics is the conceit society can’t tolerate.”

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“ROPE,” PCPA Theaterfest, Festival Theatre, 420 2nd St., Solvang, and Marian Theatre, 800 S. College, Santa Maria. Dates: Wednesdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Sept. 9. At the Marian beginning Sept. 14: Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Also Sept. 19, 26, 2 p.m. Ends Sept. 30. Prices: $15.50-$20.50. Phone: (805) 922-8313.