STRATFORD — Christopher Hampton’s “Dangerous Liaisons,” a stage adaptation of the French epistolary novel “Les Liaisons dangereuses,” is the equivalent of a venerated saint in the theatrical canon.
It debuted at the Royal Shakespeare Company exactly four decades ago this year, in a production starring Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan. It’s gone on to play Broadway not once, not twice, but three times. And it was later turned into a 1988 film, led by Glenn Close, that nabbed seven Oscar nominations, including for best picture.
Other playwrights have certainly tried to write their own versions of Choderlos de Laclos’s 1782 novel. Yet Hampton’s work is still widely — and often unquestionably — held up to be the definitive stage adaptation of the classic story. “Dangerous Liaisons” is to its source material what the musical “Les Misérables” is to Victor Hugo’s historical epic.
But why Hampton’s play is so revered, and trotted out so frequently by theatre companies around the globe, is a mystery. The work itself is staid, dated and completely tedious. The only remarkable thing about Hampton’s script is that it holds the unique distinction of being both thin and overstuffed at the same time. (I’ll get back to how it pulls off that paradox.)
All those qualities are evident in the Stratford Festival’s latest revival of “Dangerous Liaisons,” the final show to open this season at the repertory company. But that this production never fully sinks due to the leaden weight of its material is thanks in large part to Esther Jun’s inspired direction and a pair of blazing central performances.
Those two performances belong to Jesse Gervais and Jessica B. Hill. They play Le Vicomte de Valmont and La Marquise de Merteuil, respectively, the Machiavellian co-conspirators at the heart of “Dangerous Liaisons,” who plot and scheme their way into corrupting a pair of women, the devoutly pious Madame de Tourvel (Celia Aloma) and the young Cécile Volanges (Ashley Dingwell).
Laclos’s tale, set in pre-Revolutionary France, explores ideas of manipulation, domination, and the intertwined nature of sex and power.
Despite its moments of light comedy, this story is, fundamentally, exceedingly dark and sinister — an exhumation of the ills and perversions that lay below a society’s surface.
Gervais and Hill succeed because they both demonstrate a firm understanding of these themes. Watching the former, with a deep, resonant voice that’s reminiscent of Rickman, it’s impossible not to recoil in your seat in abject horror.
Gervais’s Valmont is slimy and guileful. He twists his words. He walks with a slithery gait. In him, you see Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs, all at once.
Hill’s Merteuil, meanwhile, is a woman of many superficial layers. She’s calculating in her speech. Her facial expressions feign empathy. When she talks, her arms gently waft by her torso, fingers flicking this way and that, as if dextrously manipulating a marionette.
For Hill’s Merteuil, everything is a performance. Even her home (created by set designer Teresa Przybylski) is filled with gaudy, pink furniture. But Merteuil uses this superficial performance as a means to build trust and, eventually, establish control over her victims. It’s terrifying to watch this act unfold.
There’s also something equally terrifying and insidious to Jun’s staging as a whole. Behind the decadence of this production (the pompous costumes are designed by A.W. Nadine Grant) is an ever present sense of decay, both moral and societal.
In her shadowy scene transitions, lit by lighting designer Arun Srinivasan and underscored with Baroque-style music by Richard Feren, Jun presents short sketches of debauchery among the servants, rolling in and out the furniture. On Przybylski’s set, the floors look like a chessboard that’s been mutilated in a blender. Nothing here is black and white, just fat globules of murky grey.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this production, however, is how Jun stages the play’s most crucial moment: Valmont’s rape of Cécile. It’s typically a heavy, sombre scene. But in Jun’s revival, it’s rendered startlingly brisk and light. On opening night, it even elicited pockets of nervous laughter from the crowd.
This choice will undoubtedly be divisive, maybe even controversial. But it worked for me. Because hearing those laughs made the scene all the more chilling and disquieting.
Paired with Przybylski’s semi-reflective, metallic screens, facing the audience from upstage, the nervous titters seemingly implicated the entire audience in the rape — a reminder of how often our society laughs off, shrugs off or completely ignores these depraved acts of sexual violations.
To be clear, neither Jun nor the actors play that moment for giggles. The laughs arrive merely as a consequence of the scene’s fast, clipped pacing.
Maybe it was all unintentional. But I doubt that’s the case. Because Jun did something similar, to the same chilling effect, last year with her brilliant production of Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline.”
Despite Jun’s intriguing treatment of the material, this production is still hampered by the flaws inherent to the work.
The primary issue with Hampton’s play is that it tries to be too smart for its own good. His script is overstuffed with double entendres flying off the stage and comedy that’s embedded deep, underneath the dialogue. This all places the audience on their back foot and quickly becomes monotonous.
Without much variation to this style, you may find your ears, as mine did, start to shut off.
At the same time, there’s also a thinness to the structure of “Dangerous Liaisons.” Sure, its wispy narrative can be partly chalked up to the epistolary nature of the original novel. But a strong play written for the stage must, as the adage goes, show rather than tell, which Hampton fails to do.
Instead, what we have is a mostly wearisome drawing room drama, constantly jumping from one location to the next.
It’s a pity that for its final play of the year, the Stratford Festival has chosen to revive this tired work. The company could have easily premiered a new adaptation of Laclos’s novel. It certainly has the resources and talent to do so. (You have to look no further than the smashing success of its new version of “Anne of Green Gables.”) But what we’re left with is a Stratford Festival season ending with a whimper.
