HELEN PEACOCKE talks to Edmund Kingsley about his debut at the Watermill in the play Rope, made famous by Hitchcock

A large wooden chest containing a body is the central prop on the Watermill theatre's stage. It's on this chest that the main characters set out a meal and make small talk to the victim's parents.

The play is Patrick Hamilton's psychological thriller, Rope, written and set in 1929, and based loosely on the Leopald and Loeb murder case in the US in which two wealthy university students believed their superior intellect would allow them to get away with the perfect murder.

At their trial, Leopald and Loeb admitted that they were driven by the thrill of their crime which they had spent months planning. Their lawyer, Clarence Darrow, argued that it was hardly fair to hang 19-year-olds for the Nietzschean philosophy of the superman they were taught at university. Both got life imprisonment on the strength of his arguments.

Rope was Patrick Hamilton's first theatrical success. In 1948 it was then taken up by Alfred Hitchcock, who was considered to be the only director suited to take this film on as he shared Hamilton's interest in the methodology of murder.

To keep it faithful to a staged version, Hitchcock used a fresh directing technique when filming Rope, which starred James Stewart. Each shot ran continuously for up to eight minutes without interruption. It was shot on a single set, aside from the opening street scene. He sustained the action by moving the cameras rather than the actors.

Tom Daley, a young, up-and-coming director who scored a huge success with his production of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice at the Watermill earlier this year, is directing this production.

Rope is a play that he has always wanted to direct. Like Hitchcock, he is fascinated by this compelling play which studies the way guilt affects people.

"The intimacy of the Watermill and the fact that we are staging it in the round enhances the pervading sense of tension in Rope," said Tom. "Designer Lucy Osborne and I have reconfigured the space so that the audience feel even more complicit in the action and even more terrified by Hamilton's brilliant thriller."

The theme follows Leopald and Loeb's case quite faithfully to begin with. On a night not unlike any other, Charles Granillo, played by Jake Harders, and Wyndham Brandon, played by Gyuri Sarossy, kill a fellow classmate for the simple sport of it and them stuff the body into the chest. Believing they are superior beings, they are convinced they can pull off this murder without getting caught.

But, the play then takes its own turn. Having killed, the young men want to go further and do so by holding a party to which the victim's family and friends are invited. They also invite the poet and philosopher Rupert Cadell (played by Edmund Kingsley). It is Rupert and his philosophy that have unwittingly influenced the young men to kill. So there they all are: the murderers, the victim's parents, the body and the man whose ideologies are responsible for the whole mess.

This is one murder story which allows the audience to know right from the very start not only who has been killed , but who the murderers are.

As conversation ebbs and flows at the party, Rupert becomes suspicious, and the task of the director becomes more exacting. This is a play in which every word counts. If the suspense is to continue until the very last scene the director has to get it right.

Edmund Kingsley, son of Sir Ben Kingsley, plays Rupert. He says that Hamilton is such a witty writer and Tom Daley such a good director that the tension remains throughout.

Edmund is acting at the Watermill for the first time. He is ashamed to admit that he has never even visited the theatre before.

"When I was first offered this part and told where the theatre was, I remember thinking who would ever want to build a theatre all the way out there in the middle of the countryside? But the moment I saw it, the gardens, the mill stream and everything, I realised it was a magical place and that it offered just the right space for a play such as Rope," he said.

Edmund is also trying his hand at writing radio plays, a hobby he finds stimulating and one which helps him appreciate the tightness of Hamilton's script and the way carefully selected words can be used to create suspense.

"My character, Rupert, holds everything in his hands at the end, including the rope," he said.

Edmund believes that the dark forces in the play echo the times in which it was written, in which cracks in the world order were just starting to appear.

Rope, which opened this week, continues at The Watermill, Bagnor, until Saturday, October 27. The curtain goes up at 7.30pm, but if the weather is fine most people often get there early so that they can enjoy a pre-theatre drink in the gardens.

For tickets call the box office on 01635 46044 or on line at www.watermill.org.uk