"Liaisons Dangereuses" in welcome Broadway return
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Fresh House of York (Hollywood Reporter) - Returning to Great White Way for its number 1 revival meeting since its 1987 premiere, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" proves itself as relevant as ever in its delineation of malicious sexual game-playing.
Christopher Hampton's masterful adaption of the classic 1782 Daniel Chester French epistolary novel receives an excellent intervention in the hands of music director Rufus Frank Norris and a cast headlined by Laura Linney and, making his New York stage debut, British people doer Ben Daniels.
Although this adaptation doesn't quite an compare to the brilliant master Royal stag William Shakespeare Company production headlined by Alan Rickman and Nicholas Vachel Lindsay Duncan, it even so efficaciously conveys the necessary dangerous aviation of sensual menace surrounding the machinations of its spark advance characters, the scheming Marchioness de Merteuil (Linney) and the Don Juan-like seducer, Le Vicomte de Valmont (Daniels).
In this play, which is c. H. Best known for its 1988 film version "Dangerous Liaisons," sexual urge is not so a lot around heat as it is virtually exponent and manipulation. The idea is most chillingly conveyed in a scene late in the play when Valmont, wHO has made a Faustian bargain with the Marquee to seduce and then abandon the righteous and trusting Mme. de Tourvel (Jessica Collins), finishes off his prey patch repeatedly uttering the phrase, "It's beyond my control."
The fresh-faced, sweet-voiced Linney wouldn't seem an ideal choice for the scheming Merteuil, and indeed her performance has a forced melody at multiplication. Only it step by step gains in intensity, and by the clock time the play reaches its chilling close she is thoroughly convincing.
Still better is Daniels, effortlessly suave and charismatic as Valmont. His commanding physical presence and velvety song tones make more than credible the character's abilities of conquest, and he's heartbreaking in the final moments when Valmont realizes that he himself is the ultimate victim of his malevolent scheme.
Among the supporting players, Collins doesn't quite work the necessity printing as the trusting Tourvel; Mamie Gummer, girl of Meryl Meryl Streep, is highly amusing as the innocent young lady friend upon whom Valmont first sets his sights; and such veterans as Kristine Carl Nielsen and Hsian Phillips score in their small just pivotal roles.
Drome
