In visual terms, Rourke and her team mostly opt for low-key naturalism. Read more ‘Evening at the Talk House’: Theater Review Choderlos de Laclos was an early advocate of gender equality, but Hampton also highlights the Marquise’s proto-feminist agenda: “I was born to dominate your sex and avenge my own,” she tells Valmont. She rationalizes her devious nature as essential armor against a chronically misogynistic culture in which sexual gossip can destroy a women’s reputation while enhancing a man’s. But she is no one-dimensional femme fatale figure. Her suave, husky-voiced cougar-queen is all nonchalant surface poise masking deep emotional wounds, every line precisely balanced between double meanings, every bittersweet compliment sugar-coated with irony. Like her character in the play, McTeer outshines and outmaneuvers West without appearing to really try. West also stumbled over his lines several times on press night, causing minor but perceptible disturbances in the Force. Instead, he mostly comes over as whiny and entitled, while his sudden rush of sincere romantic feelings for Madame de Tourvel lacks conviction.
DANGEROUS LIAISONS BROADWAY CAST 2008 SERIAL
His performance gets most of the big laughs at the Donmar, but undersells Valmont’s key character trait as a “conspicuously charming” serial seducer. Strutting around the stage in an unflattering wig, knee-length britches and Falstaffian waistcoat, West’s Valmont is a more comic figure than Malkovich’s calculating, vulpine sensualist. But Hampton’s more faithful reading has proved the most enduring, notably spawning the 1988 Stephen Frears film Dangerous Liaisons, which co-starred John Malkovich and Glenn Close. Strikingly modern in its cold-eyed depiction of sexuality and gender politics, Les Liaisons Dangereuses has inspired numerous stage and screen adaptations, often updated to more contemporary settings: Cruel Intentions (1999) was set in modern-day Manhattan, while a recent Chinese remake took place in 1930s Shanghai.
The hunter gets captured by the game, with lethal consequences. But their duplicity backfires when the vengeful Marquise manipulates Valmont into sleeping with both teenage convent girl Cecile de Volanges (Morfydd Clark) and the religiously devout Madame de Tourvel (Elaine Cassidy), awakening long-dormant feelings of real love and bitter jealousy in these jaded old predators. The plot revolves around the Marquise de Merteuil ( Janet McTeer) and the Vicomte de Valmont (West), gleefully amoral ex-lovers who treat sex as a sadistic spectator sport, relishing the social and emotional ruin they inflict on the romantic dupes that they seduce and abandon. A 2008 Broadway revival with Laura Linney and Ben Daniels drew a more muted reception.
Hampton’s crisp, sardonic, innuendo-heavy stage adaptation was first mounted 30 years ago by the RSC and director Howard Davies, with Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan as co-stars, winning awards both in London and New York. Published in 1782, Les Liaisons Dangereuses began its long literary afterlife as a scandalous epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, a career soldier who narrowly escaped the guillotine during the French Revolution, later becoming a minor general under Napoleon. It will also screen in cinemas in January as part of the NT Live program. Already sold out for its initial two-month run, possibly due to the marquee appeal of its male star Dominic West, this tragicomic tale of bed-hopping sociopaths clearly has the potential for an extended West End transfer, and possibly further afield too. Director Josie Rourke’s respectful revival of Christopher Hampton’s celebrated stage adaptation is a handsome and mirthful affair, albeit low on sex or surprises. An 18 th century French classic that still has plenty to say to modern audiences about sex and power, Les Liaisons Dangereuses is proof that there will always be a healthy audience for salacious menage-a-cinq plotlines.
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