Taking a different route to playing 'Strangers'

Best known in its film version - Alfred Hitchcock's dark psychological thriller - "Strangers on a Train" was first a 1950 novel by Patricia Highsmith, the story of two men, an architect named Guy Haines and a playboy named Charles Bruno, who meet on a train and strike up a conversation. Guy confesses he wants his cheating wife killed so he can marry his true love. Bruno - that's the name he goes by - says he wants his father dead. They come up with a plan: Bruno will kill Guy's wife if Guy kills his father. That way, the police won't be able to find a motive for either murder. Guy, who doesn't take the plan seriously, faces a dangerous situation when Bruno actually commits the crime. Full of regrets, Guy doesn't want to do it, but Bruno is hunting him down.

Playwright Craig Warner based his stage adaptation on the novel.

"I looked at the script, I watched the Hitchcock movie, and I read the book," says Serrell, who plays Bruno. "But I had an impossible time."

Frustrated, Serrell turned to the book "Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes" by James Gilligan, an expert in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and a new world opened up. The book cites specific cases of horrific and violent crimes, and explains why they may have happened. It humanizes murderers, and that's exactly what Serrell needed.

"I had been seeing Bruno as this monster, and I was dismissing the play as this morality tale," he says. "But the book made a clear-cut argument that violence comes out of shame and a cry for justice. It was an intelligent treatment on why people commit acts of violence."

Bruno, says Serrell, had been incredibly shamed by his father, who took his money away, and degraded and beat him. He is at the point where he'll do anything to keep his self-respect. And Guy is put in a situation he clearly cannot handle.

"The film is great. It's Hitchcock," Serrell says. "But it's much darker in the play and book. Bruno does get Guy to do the murder, and the play is about how these two different guys deal with their actions and their guilt."

The play may be the last Boston audiences will see of Serrell, a recent Brandeis graduate who has taken roles at the Publick Theatre, North Shore Music Theatre, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. He is moving to New York to join his wife and take a stab at acting there.

"I love it up here and I love, love, love the Boston community," he says. "But for the sake of my marriage I have to get my butt down there. And maybe try to work with the great actors in New York."

"Strangers on a Train" runs through May 24. 781-279-2200, www.stonehamtheatre.org

Megan Tench can be reached at mtench@globe.com