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NEW YORK TIMES LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES REVIEW
What Lurks Beneath the Ruffles
by Ben Brantley
Hedonism becomes a gravitational force in Ben Daniels’s compelling turn as an 18th-century libertine in “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” which opened Thursday night in an eye-filling, very imbalanced revival at the American Airlines Theater. Making a sensational Broadway debut in Rufus Norris’s production, which also stars an uncomfortably cast Laura Linney, this London actor seems at all times pulled, pummeled and shaped by the prospect of physical pleasure.
From the moment Mr. Daniels makes his entrance as the Vicomte de Valmont, the satin-cloaked satyr of Christopher Hampton’s 1985 adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s 1782 novel, his very posture evokes a man who hears the call of earthly delights at high volume. The thrust hip, the insinuatingly arched back, the precisely crooked arms and knees: these all suggest not only the rococo stance of a nobleman in the age of Fragonard but also a fatal receptiveness to appetite and instinct. The boy can’t help it, which means, in a world governed by calculation, there’s no way he’s going to survive.
Mr. Daniels provides both the silliest and most serious rendering I’ve seen of Valmont, who has been memorably played onstage by Alan Rickman (in the Royal Shakespeare Company production that came to Broadway in 1987) and on screen by John Malkovich (in Stephen Frears’s “Dangerous Liaisons”) and Colin Firth (in Milos Forman’s “Valmont”). His warm, fluid performance reflects what would appear to be Mr. Norris’s intention: to turn up the temperature in a work of famously icy cynicism. Unfortunately no one else in this revival approaches Mr. Daniels’s level of complexity, including Ms. Linney, a wonderful actress who has been shoehorned into a part out of her natural range and is perceptibly pinched.
As a consequence this portrait of a pair of amoral aristocrats who play the game of love as if it were a game of chess often registers with the bouncy bawdiness of a Restoration comedy (right down to a flatulence gag). When the plot turns truly nasty, it’s hard to feel the requisite shivers, and the show often wears the tight smirk of a protracted dirty joke in fancy dress.
This being a Roundabout Theater Company production, the dress is fancy all right. Katrina Lindsay’s lustrous costumes could surely have passed muster at Versailles, while Scott Pask’s set, a dark wall of windows garlanded with swags and pull cords, is just the place for voyeurs who live to catch their reflections in the glass, as well as the compromising doings of others. A tenor and soprano are on hand to sing stately songs by Handel, among others.
Mr. Norris isn’t wrong to give such attention to surface detail. For Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil (Ms. Linney), former lovers locked in a sexual conspiracy and competition, clothing is battle gear. (The opening section of Mr. Frears’s movie was largely devoted to close-ups of the main characters being poured, laced and buttoned into their lavish daily wear.)
The way you wear your hat (or should I say your perruque?) — or your pannier or knee breeches — in this hothouse environment is a signal of how well you understand the rules of your society. And no one grasps those rules better than Valmont and Merteuil, all the better to turn them into weapons in their games of conquest, betrayal and revenge. (Laclos was, appropriately, a French artillery officer with a keen interest in military strategy.)
It’s a problem, though, when only Valmont and, to a lesser extent, Merteuil seem to be of their time. The supporting cast here is perfectly creditable, including Kristine Nielsen (as a foolish mother), Jessica Collins (as the righteous object of Valmont’s most ardent designs) and, quite enjoyably, Mamie Gummer and Benjamin Walker as the most naïve and ungainly of victims.
But aside from the venerably elegant Sian Phillips, who plays Valmont’s worldly aunt (and played Madame de Volanges, Ms. Nielsen’s character, in the Forman film), they feel like contemporary creations. They’re stranded in a distant era, as well as being none too bright. Of course they don’t understand what Valmont and Merteuil have in store for them. They are, to warp a phrase, sitting pigeons for two wily cats, and for much of the play, we laugh as they fall blindly into traps. As Valmont says, when Merteuil proposes he seduce Ms. Gummer’s character, “It’s too easy.”
Still, I suppose it’s just as well these folks are as dim as they are, since anyone with any common sense would back away fast from Ms. Linney’s scarily severe Merteuil. In film (“You Can Count on Me,” “The Savages”) and on Broadway (“The Crucible,” “Sight Unseen”), Ms. Linney has established herself as an actress of peerless emotional transparency, capable of conveying a multitude of conflicting feelings through minimal means.
Here she is required to wear a mask of hypocrisy, and it doesn’t fit. Whether scheming with Valmont, pretending to be a pillar of rectitude or being serviced by a young lover, this Merteuil is made of unyielding stone. I think I see where Ms. Linney is coming from: she’s picked up on the character’s feminist anger and bitterness. She is at her best in her seething monologues about the lot of women. And more than any I’ve seen, this “Liaisons” hints that the Marquise might prefer her own sex.
But when she says contemptuously of the puritanical Madame de Tourvel (Ms. Collins), “They never let themselves go, these people,” she might be describing herself. Wintry to the point of frigidity, this harsh schemer seems incapable of enjoying anything, even being mean. And the luxuriant complicity that Mr. Rickman and Lindsay Duncan embodied so seductively in the original Broadway version is all but nonexistent between Ms. Linney and Mr. Daniels.
Parents hoping to treat their children to an educational visit to pre-Revolutionary France, be warned: Mr. Norris, whose current “Cabaret” in London is notable for its explicit coital ballets, makes a point of revealing what’s beneath those big skirts and tail coats. Several sexual positions are specifically simulated, and Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walker are, briefly, starkers.
Even buck naked, though, Mr. Daniels seems comfortably clothed, just as when he’s fully clothed he seems comfortably naked. His Valmont is a remarkably consistent creation, a man of exuberant moral passivity, more hopelessly sybaritic than truly evil. It makes sense when he is surprised by deeper feelings.
I’m not sure that’s what Laclos had in mind when he conceived Valmont. But Mr. Daniels’s reading of the part can be fully justified by the script. The line that proves to be Valmont’s undoing — “It’s beyond my control” — might well be his mantra throughout. In his final scene Mr. Daniels turns a prolonged sword fight (expertly staged by Rick Sordelet) into a portrait en précis of Valmont’s whole life. It stands out as a miniature masterpiece of light and shadow in a production that otherwise never quite bridges those extremes.
LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES
By Christopher Hampton, based on the novel by Choderlos de Laclos; directed by Rufus Norris; sets by Scott Pask; costumes by Katrina Lindsay; lighting by Donald Holder; sound by Paul Arditti; hair and wig design by Paul Huntley; voice and speech coach, Deborah Hecht; fight director, Rick Sordelet; production stage manager, Arthur Gaffin; general manager, Sydney Beers; technical supervisor, Steve Beers; associate artistic director, Scott Ellis. Presented by the Roundabout Theater Company, Todd Haimes, artistic director; Harold Wolpert, managing director; Julia C. Levy, executive director. At American Airlines Theater, 227 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 719-1300. Through July 6. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes.
WITH: Laura Linney (La Marquise de Merteuil), Ben Daniels (Le Vicomte de Valmont), Sian Phillips (Madame de Rosemonde), Jessica Collins (Madame de Tourvel), Mamie Gummer (Cécile Volanges), Kristine Nielsen (Madame de Volanges), Benjamin Walker (Le Chevalier Danceny), Rosie Benton (Émilie), Derek Cecil (Azolan), Kevin Duda (Footman/Tenor), Tim McGeever (Major-domo), Jane Pfitsch (Maid/Soprano), Nicole Orth-Pallavicini and Delphi Harrington (Servants).
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