Les Liaisons Dangereuses review – love is a fight for power in this bold staging
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<p><strong>National theatre, London</strong><br>A queenly Lesley Manville steals the show in this dark, rageful tale of seduction as contact sport</p><p>Pierre Choderlos de Laclos was serving as an artillery officer while writing his epistolary novel about a cold game of seduction in the salons of 18<sup>th</sup>-century France which backfires on its conniving architects. It shows: love is a fight for power and control in his story, every bit as st
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Review Les Liaisons Dangereuses review – love is a fight for power in this bold staging National theatre, London A queenly Lesley Manville steals the show in this dark, rageful tale of seduction as contact sport P ierre Choderlos de Laclos was serving as an artillery officer while writing his epistolary novel about a cold game of seduction in the salons of 18 th -century France which backfires on its conniving architects. It shows: love is a fight for power and control in his story, every bit as strategic as a military campaign. Popularly known through the 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons, starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich (and also the teen version of it, 1999’s Cruel Intentions), this production is directed by Marianne Elliott and uses an adaptation by Christopher Hampton – whose play of the novel, first staged in 1985, was also the basis for the film starring Close. The intention of Choderlos de Laclos’ novel was to expose the dissolute soul of the upper classes. So it features aristocratic widow and arch Machiavel, the Marquise de Merteuil (Lesley Manville), and society rake, Vicomte de Valmont (Aidan Turner), constructing a web of sexual deceits. The Marquise’s wager – for him to seduce young Cécile de Volanges (Hannah van der Westhuysen, full of giggles and guilelessness) and the pious Madame de Tourvel (Monica Barbaro) for sport – backfires when he finds himself falling in love. Together, they are deliciously horrible, although it is Manville (who played Cecile in the play’s original staging) that steals the show. She looks queenly in magnificent ornate dress, its vivid red denoting the bloodsport of her scheme. She is by turns the effervescent social butterfly, the coolly deceiving manipulator and ruthless sexual predator. A woman who “was born to dominate the opposite sex and avenge her own”, the contained rage burns off her in the final scenes with Valmont as she declares war. Turner as Valmont is an Irish-accented serial seducer, louche and playful rath...
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