After them, le déluge

Robert Nott |

10/9/2008 - 10/10/08

In the war waged in Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the battlefield is the bedroom, and the choice of weapons is sex. The lead players, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, use seduction to destroy the reputation, the character, and the emotional well-being of a number of other dramatis personae, including the innocent 15-year-old Cécile Volanges and her suitor, the Chevalier Danceny. These liaisons go beyond being just risky, naughty, and erotic; they ultimately bring about the downfall of just about everyone involved.

Theaterwork kicks off its current season with a production of Hampton's 1985 drama, opening at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 10th, for a two-weekend run at the James A. Little Theater. David Matthew Olson directs a cast that includes Catherine Donavon (Merteuil), Jack Sherman (Valmont), Dana Amromin (Cécile), and Jonathan Dixon (Danceny).

Set in an array of salons and boudoirs in and around Paris in the 1780s, the play is based on Choderlos de Laclos' scandalous epistolary novel of 1782. In the story, Merteuil makes a bet with one of her former lovers, Valmont. If he can seduce the respectable, pious Madame de Tourvel — a challenge he anticipates with great delight — he can once again enjoy Merteuil's sexual favors. But her ultimate goal is to have Valmont deflower the virginal Cécile, who is now betrothed to Merteuil's ex-lover Gercourt. In the interim, Merteuil will distract and seduce Cécile's young admirer Danceny.

What ruins everything for everybody is the unexpected: love.

Laclos (1741-1803), an army officer and low-level member of nobility, suggested in an editor's preface to the book that he published the letters as "a service rendered to good morals to unmask the methods employed by those whose morals are bad, in corrupting others who are good, and I think that these letters effectively contribute to that end."

Still, readers of the novel today might assume that de Laclos was a Harold Robbins or Jacqueline Susann of his time, a man masking real-life people and situations in the guise of fiction to shock and sell. Modern-day audiences familiar with the play or with any of the film adaptations (including Stephen Frears' 1988 version, which won Hampton an Oscar for his screenplay) may be just as drawn to the story for its many scenes of seduction and sensuality as for its morality-tale sensibility.

For Olson, the play seems appropriate for our times. "These people were celebrities, and gossip was the currency of the time. The emphasis was on form, on fashion, on wealth. And there was an incredible commodification of women, including by other women. It seems we can't get away from that one."

Hampton (who studied languages at Oxford University and garnered an Oscar nod for his cinematic adaptation of last year's Atonement) wrote Les Liaisons Dangereuses in less than two months near the end of 1984. He told The New York Times earlier this year that he started by creating "a great big map of where everybody was all through the novel. And literally I thought, Well, I'll have to move this person to this address, and this person to this address, to get everyone in the right place at the right time." After attempting to write the work in period English, he settled on contemporary dialogue with 18th-century syntax. "As soon as I started doing that, I thought, I've found the sound of the play," he explained. The play was an immediate hit in London and made the move to Broadway in 1987. The Roundabout Theatre Company revived the piece this past May in New York.

Olson said that the title is often misunderstood. "It seems like a simple translation: dangerous liaisons. But in our culture, liaisons can suggest something sexy, a romantic encounter, whereas in French, the wording may mean an engagement or a linkage or a coming-together. Liaisons can be fruitful, generous, life-affirming — or dangerous, which means they can plant seeds for disaster, loneliness, mayhem, even murder."

For Donavon — who said she has never played a character quite as manipulative as Merteuil — the "danger" in the title is twofold: "It's much more about the corruption of these two characters' [Merteuil and Valmont] own moral base. It's dangerous not just for the people who they are manipulating but dangerous for themselves. They're always walking this tightrope with lies and deceptions, yet I think that's what they enjoy about it, too." Still, the actress has come to admire her onstage alter ego: "I've known a couple of people like her, and there's something strangely admirable about them. I guess you admire excellence wherever you see it, and she's excellent at what she does."

Olson's set design places the characters in near-empty palaces with transparent walls, giving the sense that they are nothing more than ghosts. Whether they knew it or not, it was the last gasp of excess for their culture, according to Olson, since the French Revolution was just around the corner. "They are haunted, but they become the haunters," he said. "The cracks under their feet are beginning to give, and eventually everything will fall apart. They're still dancing, but the coming collapse is obvious."

Yet Olson doesn't see the play as being judgmental toward its characters. "The mirror isn't held up to them, but to us. All great dramas should do that. It's not about transforming us but allowing us to see ourselves. If people come out of the theater after seeing this and say, 'I'm glad I don't have a bone like that in my body,' my response might be, 'Really? Which convent are you returning to?' It's not who we want to be, but it's who we are. We have to admit our capacity to fail."

details
Theaterwork presents Les Liaisons Dangereuses
7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday & Thursday, Oct. 10, 11 & 16; 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 12; through Oct. 19
James A. Little Theater, New Mexico School for the Deaf, 1060 Cerrillos Road
$15, $10 for teens; call 471-1799