Dangerous Liaisons

I love Les Liaisons Dangereuses, it’s probably one of my favourite modern plays. I’ve now seen it performed on stage 5 times, and of course, I’ve seen the film, which I don’t think is a patch on the play. I’ve seen it in the RSC’s Other Place*, in the days when it was still a tin hut, I’ve seen the RSC on tour perform it on a proscenium arch stage, I’ve also seen it done like that at the Theatre Royal, I’ve seen it in a studio theatre performed by students at Uni, and at the weekend I saw it on a traverse stage at Friargate Theatre. After seeing all these productions, I’m convinced that it’s a play for a small intimate space, where the audience becomes complicit with the actions of the characters.

I love it because it has good female characters, with the ultimate manipulator Merteuil as the best. You wouldn’t want to play cards with her, as you know that she’d hold all the aces. Valmont, the practised seducer, is, at the end of the play, as manipulated by her as any of the other characters, and yet her victory over him is shallow, particularly with the shadow of the guillotine hanging over that whole regime.

It has some fabulous dialogue, and wonderfully written exchanges between Merteuil and Valmont. The production stands or falls by the casting of the two leads, and Settlement Players were lucky in their cast, with two excellent actors who could really hold the stage.

It’s a very personal response, though, as I raved about the play as we left the theatre, my friend said how she felt that it was all quite futile at the end, and didn’t really go anywhere, and I tried to explain that that was where I felt its brilliance was. The lead characters are not ‘nice’ people, but they are clever, and skilful and witty. They may have ‘cruel intentions’** but they are attractive. I suppose I like it, and them, for the same reasons that I like Richard III.

It was a pretty good way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

*Great theatre is when you forget to breathe, and this was probably one of the greatest pieces of theatre that I’ve ever seen.

** see what I did there?