“Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” the 1782 epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, is one of the supreme works of world literature, though not the easiest thing to turn into an effective play Novel-Prize. That Christopher Hampton achieved this was not clear to me 20 years ago. The current New York revival, starring Laura Linney and Britain’s Ben Daniels, allows this great dark flower of evil to almost fully bloom.
This is the story of a pair of deeply amoral aristocrats, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, who perform villainy as smoothly as their names alliterate.
Allies in diabolism, these former lovers turn their passion into destruction — Merteuil to avenge the defection of another erstwhile paramour, Valmont out of getting supreme gratification from the seduction of the innocent. Together they launch a campaign resulting in the physical annihilation or moral devastation of several people, ultimately including themselves.
Merteuil, a seductress who drops men like a snake shedding her skin, persuades Valmont to deflower Cecile de Volange, the convent-bred teenager engaged to her former lover. Because Valmont finds this assignment too easy — “She’d be on her back before you’d unwrapped the first bunch of flowers” — he simultaneously undertakes the seduction of Madame de Tourvel, a beautiful, extremely devout and strictly devoted wife.
Intrigues beget intrigues, and the plot of the drama involves intricacies beyond easy summary. Suffice it to say that Laclos was an artillery officer specializing in demolition and, though highly moral himself, took vicarious pleasure in the systematic dismantling of his characters’ most virtuous defenses.
Dreary Music
Director Rufus Norris does an adequate job apart from one nearly fatal error. For no defensible reason, he introduces numerous interludes of dreary, annoyingly sung music, which loosen the tightening coils of the plot for no better reason than facilitating transitions or, perhaps, creating period atmosphere, of which Laclos and Hampton have provided all that is necessary.
Though losing the needed urgency, Norris does create pretty pictures and allows the alternatingly sparkling or acidic dialogue unimpeded progress. In Daniels he has a persuasive Valmont who seduces audiences as tidily as women; his one flaw is sitting too often with one leg artfully draped on chair arms or tables. Otherwise he is a fine blend of genuine allure and fake amiability.
Tragic Tourvel
Benjamin Walker is letter-perfect as the Chevalier Danceny, one of several innocent victims, but the most arresting performance is that of the lovely Jessica Collins as the adorable and tragic Madame de Tourvel. Her traversal from pillar of virtue to passionate lover to heartbreakingly wounded animal conveys both the elaborate artifice of 18th-century manners and its shattering perversion and collapse Novel-Prize.
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