The Stratford Theatre Review: Christopher Hampton‘s Dangerous Liaisons
By Ross
The mirrored walls are moved and shifted into place to both hide and reflect back all the deceptions that are hidden and twisted within Christopher Hampton’s epic Dangerous Liaisons. In tribute to the play’s “goodness“, the Stratford Festival has expertly crafted together a war of the sexes, stitched together with intent, revolving around love, honor, betrayal, and vanity. All are on full peacocked display here, thanks to director Esther Jun’s (Stratford’s Cymbeline) focused fortitude, delivering the required energy and presence to occupy the floral bows and side glances required, but somehow the effort falters somewhat in the verbal delivery, tempering the simmering tension into a more tepid state than one might expect from such an electric, devious play.
The production, overwhelmed with feathered headdresses and equally light performances, moves forward as expected, thanks to the precision of playwright Hampton (The Height of the Storm), drawing intrigue from the classic novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” by Choderlos De Laclos. “Love is something you use,” states our central character, Marquise De Merteuil, performed with a certain level of glee by Jessica B. Hill (Tarragon’s Paint Me This House of Love), with a sly glance and a nod to her cohort and supposed confidante, the vain Vicomte De Valmont, portrayed with a flourish by Jesse Gervais (Native Earth Performing Arts‘ Women of the Fur Trade). The two are a charming pair of schemers, rivals who enjoy using sex as a strategic weapon for focused humiliation and degradation. Love and revenge seem to be their favored flavours, but ‘cruelty’, we are informed, is really the Marquise de Merteuil’s prime forever focus.
Valmont has decided to target the virtuous—and married—Madame de Tourvel, played with solid, carefully constructed resolve by Celia Aloma (Stratford’s Love’s Labour’s Lost), in the dangerous game of desire against her perceived steadfast, internalized morality, creating love quite beyond anyone’s control. The Marquise de Merteuil’s cruel eye is fixed on the young and naive Cécile de Volanges, played with giddy purpose by Ashley Dingwell (Grenfell’s Hedda Gabler). Convent-trained and about to become engaged to a gentleman handpicked by her mother, Madame de Volanges, artfully brought to life by Nadine Villasin (Stratford’s Forgiveness), this young girl is an eager-to-please pawn in the Marquise’s cruel game
to avenge a former lover who, as it turns out, betrayed her for another woman, who herself had broken with Valmont. The scheme seems easy—tailor-made for this pair, like the gorgeous gowns and suits designed by A. W. Nadine Grant (Stratford’s Serving Elizabeth)—almost too easy, Valmont admits, as the first supposed twist of the blade exacts itself with a calculated precision. But the game is only just beginning.
The task of deflowering the young Cécile, as now seen by the Marquise (since Valmont is occupied elsewhere), must fall on her “charming but hopeless” intellectual music tutor, the Chevalier Danceny, adeptly portrayed by Leon Qin (Grand’s Kim’s Convenience). And with the Marquise’s guiding hand, the two have fallen almost instantly in love with each other, and pine for one another in the way that only the young are able. The Marquise, ever pragmatic, declares that ‘intellectuals always seem to be the most stupid,’ and to manipulate these young lovebirds and win the overarching game of deceit, Merteuil and Valmont team up to pretend they’re helping them find happiness—while secretly gaining access to their correspondence, their emotional excesses, and ultimately, the naive trust needed to turn them into pawns in their grand— and treacherous— scheme. But only after using them for their own pleasure.
Set against the ever-changing feathered and statued scenery of pre-Revolution France, designed with a strong attention to detail by Teresa Przybylski (Stratford’s A Wrinkle in Time) complemented by careful lighting by Arun Srinivasan (MTSC/Tarragon’s Craze) and a solid sound design composed by Richard Feren (CS’s The Inheritance), Dangerous Liaisons breathes with elegance and pomp. It offers all the ornate curtseys and pompous bows required to manipulate those around with intent, but the quiet edge of danger never seems to fully materialize in the vocal tones and demeanors of most on stage. I wanted a slyer and sharper-tongued manipulation, sliced heartlessly with the intended whispered force that stings harder than it initially feels like it should. The long-time Stratford Festival company member, Seana McKenna (Stratford’s Les Belles-Soeurs), as Madame De Rosemonde, found the perfect tonal note for her scenes of receiving confidences. She completely understands the difference between projection and articulation. Gervais, for the most part, struck a similar smart chord, relishing in the cunning clarity of tone, but Hill’s pedestrian unveiling never quite hit the mark.
The staging also lacked a sense of centered flow. Thoughtfully, the more intimate scenes—like Cécile’s seduction—were placed on the ‘balcony’ level, while positioning the majority of the more public sitting room scenes comfortably center stage, thrusting the clever interactions almost into our laps. It’s a strong formula, but the one time it didn’t work was the final destruction of the married and virtuous Madame de Tourvel, played out in the overly tight space up top. I couldn’t help but worry for the actors as the emotional scene flung itself around the space in despair, daring gravity and fate alike. Perhaps, thanks to “heroic restraint,” no real harm came to the actress playing Madame de Tourvel in that moment—at least physically on that flipped Juliet balcony scene. Emotionally, it was rightfully charged, in a way that seemed to surprisingly evade the others.
No one can forget the 1988 movie version of this infamous play and the casual cruelty that lived in Glenn Close’s delicious delivery. Director Stephen Frears expertly crafted his film “Dangerous Liaisons” to build iconic moments of quiet deception that force us to lean in almost too close to hear the way Close speaks with the epic John Malkovich. It felt dangerous and deceptive, cut with tight rage and ferociousness—qualities that don’t seem to be in abundance in this richly designed undertaking on the Festival Stage at the Stratford Festival. It hovers, almost hitting its feather-penned mark and the blood it brings forth when plunged slyly into another’s heart, but without that tonal edge, something that (not shockingly) both Glenn Close understood with her Marquise and Meryl Streep quietly and wisely delivered with her own master manipulator, the Marquise de Miranda Priestly, this Dangerous Liaisons floats on somewhat tepid waters, neither hot nor cold enough to give us the shivers and tremors that I was desiring. Even with the rebellious sharpness of time falling down on them as they look to the future.
