These liaisons are still just as dangerous
When Les Liaisons Dangereuses ravished audiences at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1985 with Lindsay Duncan, Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman, it carried a certain frisson. After that, the story of sexual manipulation among the 18th-century French aristocracy was turned into a film by Stephen Frears starring Glenn Close, Michelle Pfeiffer and John Malkovich. Its secrets have been laid bare. Its novelty is largely spent.
The challenge for Janet McTeer and Dominic West in this vigorous revival, which opened just before Christmas, is therefore to make the bosom of Christopher hampton’s play heave again with new passion.
Responsibility for this falls largely on West in the Malkovich role, tasked with seducing the ingénue Cecile — a job that McTeer’s Marquise dismisses as easy as ‘a tenor clearing his throat’.
More challenging is bedding the notoriously virtuous Madame Tourvel — played by elaine Cassidy after Michelle Dockery pulled out when her fiance became tragically ill.
Closely monitored by his mentor and lover the Marquise, West purrs like a soft-top Bentley. It’s not difficult to imagine ladies peeling off their corsets when he takes them for a ride — all the more so thanks to hampton’s wit, which gives him a fine, polished finish.
And yet there is little conflict in West’s slick into middle age, West has a military bearing and seems quite comfortable in his leathery hide, neither vulnerable nor vain. Certainly not scared of losing his wager.
Much more striking is Cassidy in the Michelle Pfeiffer role of Madame Tourvel — West’s pale and vulnerable prey. She is at first a moral and sexual glacier, but as she warms up she falls apart. Spectacularly.
By contrast, McTeer in the Glenn Close role is forever obliged to rein herself in and so proves very english: a longnecked swan floating on a shimmering taffeta dress. Josie Rourke’s production has a respectable first half on Tom Scutt’s candlelit set of faded grandeur which attenuates the gilt and curlicues of French rococo for modern tastes.
The second half benefits from loss of control: gloves come off along with the bodices and the theatrical pulse quickens. So yes, Les Liaisons may lack a sense of danger on its pearl anniversary. But even if the play springs few surprises, it smoulders nicely again.
ALL theatrical roads lead to Michael Grandage these days. The Donmar’s revered former artistic director has thrown his weight — as producer — behind a new venture in the former St Martin’s Art College.
The Dazzle sees the casting of three widely feted young thesps in the shape of Joanna Vanderham, Andrew Scott and David Dawson.
The play, by Richard Greenberg, is a murky psychological melodrama about the Collyer brothers — two deep-cast neurotics who holed themselves up in their Manhattan apartment amid 100 tons of junk until their deaths in 1947.
Atmosphere hangs like yellow smog over Ben Stones’ set and director Simon evans solicits exquisite performances. Vanderham, as a sexually precocious heiress, has all the capricious magnetism to make the brothers sweat and panic, but Andrew Scott’s Langley remains steadfastly solipsistic.
David Dawson is striking, too, as the wiry, hair-triggered elder brother.
Greenberg’s long, dark and fitfully witty play isn’t a barrel of laughs and is far from dazzling, but Michael Grandage has once more mobilised some serious talent.