“Les Liaisons Dangereuses”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - February 2010

“Liaisons! What’s happened to them?
Liaisons today.
To see them–indiscriminate
Women, it
Pains me more than I can say,
The lack of taste that they display!

Where is style?
Where is skill?
Where is forethought?
Where’s discretion of the heart?
Where’s passion in the art?
Where’s craft?”

– Stephen Sondheim, Liaisons from A Little Night Music

Although I have never seen the popular 1988 film or read a translation of the 1782 novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses*, I knew enough to attach two words to what I would see on stage at Shakespeare & Company production of Christopher Hampton’s 1985 stage adaptation – sex and costumes. There are plenty of both in this production, but I found the costumes more exciting. I mean, sex has stayed pretty much the same over the past couple of centuries – insert Tab A into Slot B – but no one dresses like that anymore.

But the whole thing left me rather cold, and cold is not the temperature at which sex is best enjoyed. The whole point of staging a show like this in the winter is to heat things up a bit, n’est pas? Elizabeth Aspenlieder and Josh Aaron McCabe, who play Madame la Marquise de Murteuil and Le Vicomte de Valmont respectively, are attractive and accomplished performers whose work I generally enjoy, but here they have been allowed or encouraged by director Tina Packer to give performances which vary widely in style and tempo.

What Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803) wanted to accomplish with his writing (his career was primarily in the military) was to “write a work which departed from the ordinary, which made a noise, and which would remain on earth after his death.” Well, with Les Liaisons Dangereuses he succeeded.

Laclos set his novel in his own time, and, although he lived to see the revolution that decimated the lives of the people on whom he based his fictional characters, there is no foreshadowing in his tale of sexual intrigue amongst the upper classes, nor did he return to rewrite his novel to reflect the dramatic change. Therefore I find it annoying that Hampton chooses to end his play with the image and sound of a falling guillotine. It feels like overkill (pun probably intended).

There is a lot that is overwrought in this production, which hardly needed to become any more “wrought” than it already was. This was a time and place where everything was elaborate – dress, interior design, dance, hairstyles, music, furniture, and rules of etiquette. Hampton has placed all of these on the stage, and then allowed them to speak for themselves. His script moves swiftly and his language is sharply honed. Packer has her actors using odd vocal tricks and even odder movements. At one point she even has Aspenlieder and McCabe literally hopping about, presumably indicating that they are playing some sort of game of chess on the floor tiles. Do we need to be that obvious? I can only assume that she feels these embellishments will make the script more accessible or funnier to a modern audience. I fear Packer is too accustomed to staging Shakespeare. Someone should remind her that 1985 isn’t THAT long ago!

Think of this as a sort of pre-television reality show The Real Noblility of 18th Century Paris only you are the intrusive camera catching all the naughty goings-on. The Marquise and the Vicomte are old friends and have been lovers, although during this play they are expending their sexual energies elsewhere. They enjoy doing things as a team, and here we watch them meddle in the lives of a young virgin fresh out of the convent, Cécile de Volanges (Lydia Barnett-Mulligan), and a virtuous married woman, Madame de Tourvel (Kelly Galvin), just for the fun of it. Their games goes awry and more people than they originally intended get pretty badly hurt along the way, but the sport is amusing while it lasts.

Cécile is enamored of her young music teacher, Le Chevalier Danceny (Enrico Sapda), must to the horror of her mother, Madame de Volanges (Jennie Burkhard Jadow), who has arranged a more financially advantageous match with a gentlemen Cecile considers positively geriatric at 36.

Barnett-Mulligan is all wide-eyed innocence – until Valmont assists in her “education,” but Jadow is badly miscast as her mother. She and Barnett-Mulligan appear to be, and probably are, about the same age. You do not cast one actress in her 20’s to play the mother of another, and in the close confines of the Bernstein theatre using heavy make-up to age Jadow would have been inappropriate. I understand that Packer selected this play to best utilize her actor/managers on hand and on the payroll, but surely there was a talented woman of a more suitable age available.

Galvin gives a remarkably restrained performance, looking almost puritanical in her demure blue and white gowns with her prayer book in hand. Despite her best efforts, however, I never understood why, or exactly how and when, Mme. De Tourvel falls for Valmont. Packer has McCabe use a much softer and more naturalistic tone of voice in his scenes with Galvin, giving the illusion that here we are seeing the real man, rather than the prancing performance he usually presents to the world.

Rounding out the cast are Renée Margaret Speltz as Valmont’s “eternal aunt” (P.G. Wodehouse would have approved!), Alexandra Lincoln as Émilie, a courtesan, Douglas Seldin as the Marquise’s Majordomo and Father Anselme, and Scott Renzoni as Valmont’s valet, Azolan.

Speltz rather underplays her role – one has the feeling she wandered in from some other, far more serious, drama – and Lincoln rather overplays hers. But Renzoni makes a remarkable and understated success of his small part. Frankly, I didn’t even catch the character’s name during the show, but as I was walking out to my car the buzz around the parking lot was all about “the stone-faced guy.” This is great for Renzoni, but surely the buzz should have been all about Aspenlieder and McCabe?

“Men have many ways to express themselves. We only have our hats and dresses” – Keira Knightley as Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire in the 2008 film The Duchess

Let’s talk about Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, (1757-1806) an ancestor of both Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson, who was the fashion trendsetter style of the late 18th century. If you haven’t read Amanda Foreman’s excellent biography, catch the film which, even more so than the book, gives a very clear picture of the restricted lives that even very wealthy women led in those days. In pre-production interviews Aspenlieder spoke poignantly about her interpretation of the Marquise as a woman flexing what few muscles she had, and one of them was indubitably fashion.

Costume designer Govane Lohbauer, the Berkshires’ High Priestess of Period Costume, has been given the budget to make this production a feast for the eyes. Everyone, but especially Aspenlieder, has one delicious outfit after another and it is fun to admire all the frills and furbelows.

The set by Carl Sprague is minimal, which is one way Shakespeare & Company is wisely striving to cut costs and balance its books. The moveable white panels which form the backdrop do succeed to brightening up the rather gloomy Bernstein Theatre and provide a clean canvas to set off Lohbauer’s costumes. I also liked how neatly they concealed a bed large enough to allow two adults room to romp.

Music by Alexander Sovronsky separates the eighteen scenes of the play, allowing Packer to choreograph little period dances and mini-intrigues into the scene changes.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses runs through March 21 in the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre on the Shakespeare & Company campus on Kemble Street in Lenox. The show runs two hours and forty-five minutes with one intermission, and despite its racy themes is clean and lively enough for kids 10 and up to enjoy. For information and reservations call 413-637-3353 or go on line to boxoffice@shakespeare.org.

* If you have wasted any time attempting to pronounce the title of this play, or if your inability to do so has prevented you from calling for tickets, just call it Dangerous Liaisons and be done with it.

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