Les Liaisons Dangereuses

by Christopher Hampton

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 30 January 2016

This revival of the play, based on the epistolary novel by Choderlos de Laclos, is directed by Josie Rourke and designed by Tom Scutt. It features Janet McTeer as la Marquise de Merteuil and Dominic West as le Comte de Valmont, with Elaine Cassidy as Madame de Tourvel, Edward Holcroft as le Chevalier de Danceny and Una Stubbs as Madame de Rosemonde, Morfydd Clark as Cécile de Volanges and Adjoa Andoh as Madame de Volanges.

In late eighteenth-century but pre-Revolutionary France the Marquise and the Comte,once lovers but now sexual adventurers, engage in various plots of seduction to amuse themselves ; but the Marquise is playing for higher stakes than the Comte, who (as is perhaps the way with over-confident men) has under-estimated the woman whom he had thought of as an equal. The Comte at first unwillingly fulfils the Marquise's proposal that he seduce an innocent young girl (Cécile de Volonges), while at the same time he finds that the virtuous Madame de Tourvel stirs deeper feelings in him than he bargained for. In turn Madame de Tourvel succumbs to passion, but they are both destroyed by the Marquise's resentment.

The novel caused outrage for its cynicism, and even with ostensibly less prim 'modern' sensibilities it can still seem quite shocking, as sentimental notions of pleasure and desire are ruthlessly subordinated to a clear-eyes view of sexual and gender politics. The novelistic conventions are subverted at every turn: the romp of a young blade indulging in bedroom escapades is undercut by a keen sense of the cost to women in a rigidly judgemental society - but the notion of a virtuous Clarissa expiring in shame is tempered by the frank enjoyment of sensuality which Valmont can inspire, and Madame de Tourvel's end, though similar to Clarissa's, does not seem so uplifting.

Janet McTeer inflected every moment of the Marquise's playing of 'the game' with dangerous cunning and consummate artistry, yet she was also able to display a deep pain and sense of betrayal that the character could barely admit to herself. It was a towering performance.

Unfortunately, Dominic West's Valmont was not in the same class - he did not reveal so subtly the curious sense of danger to others and vulnerable lack of self awareness that would have made his predatory actions disturbing as well as blackly comic. The result was that the seduction scenes allowed for a little too much easy laughter from the audience, while the desperately cruel rejection of Madame de Tourvel was, in fact, cruel without being desperate. Elaine Cassidy's Madame de Tourvel was however finely convincing as a virtuous woman unexpectedly tripped up by an awakening passion that she never expected to feel. This, rather than portraying priggishness brought low, made for a compelling picture of a woman in a fatal quandary.

The world of both the novel and the play is not a pretty one, and the price of 'success' in 'the game' is as costly as the price of failure. The predicament of women as analysed by the Marquise leaves very little room for manoeuvre, and her determination to preserve her sense of integrity leads to a great deal of collateral damage. All this is all powerfully revealed by this production.