Theater Review: "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," by Christopher Hampton

Love, the supreme passion, is only a contest of icy calculation—sort of sexual fox-hunting—for the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, the debauched French aristocrats at the heart of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Or so they tell each other. For the great irony of their high-stakes gamesmanship is that they are as consumed by hot passions as the people of whom they make sport.

I first read Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 epistolary novel for a Columbia University course in my long-ago-and-far-away undergrad days, taught by the very fine Professor Lennard Davis. Though I found this tale of revenge and betrayal reasonably diverting (especially sandwiched between Samuel Richardson's insipid Pamela and Fanny Burney's boring Evelina), it never occurred to me, intellectually unformed pup that I was (yes, yes, I hear the inevitable cry: “What’s with the past tense, Mike?”), that it could ever be transformed into a drama that both overflowed with subtext and functioned as sturdy stage carpentry, complete with intriguing opening, sharply ironic reversals and a stunning denouement.

Christopher Hampton's successful 1987 stage adaptation, with Alan Rickman-Lindsey Duncan (early in these distinguished actors' careers), proved me wrong. This past spring, at its American Airlines Theatre on 42nd Street, the Roundabout Theatre mounted the first Broadway revival of the play since that acclaimed production. I was lucky enough to catch the show in early May on a Saturday afternoon matinee.

Though it closed earlier this month, I think it's worthwhile to revisit it—to discover what made it work and to analyze the vast disconnect between some critics' sharp opinions and the equally manifest lack of understanding of what they see.

I'm a Roundabout Theatre subscriber, but even if that weren't the case there was no chance that I would miss this production, especially since it featured one of my favorite actresses of stage, screen, TV, or any venue in any conceivable universe: Laura Linney. In only one of her many roles have I felt that she was even slightly miscast, as the prim and plain Puritan wife Elizabeth Proctor in the 2002 revival of Arthur Miller's The Crucible that co-starred Liam Neeson.

Linney's work here came in for criticism by several reviewers, who carped that her prior work in virtuous roles little prepared her for Merteuil the icy schemer. As far as I’m concerned, this complaint just demonstrates how modern media criticism has become a license for peddling nonsense.

Laced with epigrams, double entendres and subtext, this drama of manners requires dexterous actors. Time and again, Linney demonstrated she was up for the challenge.

As the ancien regime widow and plotter Merteuil, tightly corseted at center stage, she sent out words winged with innuendo, arch malice, and resentment. Merteuil’s most famous line (“I always knew I was born to dominate your sex and avenge my own”) is uttered with typical haughtiness to Valmont.

But Linney really unearthed all kinds of layers in her character in a less-noticed speech, when she involuntarily blurts out to her former lover, "I wanted you before we'd even met. My self-esteem demanded it. Then, when you began to pursue me…I wanted you so badly. It's the only one of my notions that has ever got the better of me."

Ben Daniels, who won an Olivier Award in Great Britain in this role, returned Linney’s volleys at every turn. He also proved a great improvement on John Malkovich in the 1988 movie version. I had always thought that Malkovich simply did not possess the good looks that made the character a ladykiller. Now, I realize, the trouble is more fundamental: that his Valmont practically slithers, snake-like, across the screen.

The Valmont of the stage—as Daniels and, I suspect, Rickman played him – is a man of action—in his element when he is most dashing around, plotting, lightning-fast. It takes this kind of character to initiate the series of events in Act II that make every scene shorter and more likely to lead to disaster for Valmont and his entire jaded society.

Though Jessica Collins did not capture the depth of torment of the object of Valmont’s careful seduction, the virtuous wife Tourvel, the rest of the supporting cast performed very well indeed.
Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep's daughter, played Cecile, an innocent teenager (also seduced by Valmont) as much more of an idiot than Uma Thurman did in the film—and, judging from Hampton's script, in a manner that was far closer to the playwright's conception of the role. Welsh actress Sian Phillips—best known on this side of the Atlantic for playing an icy villainess in a different era entirely, Livia in the Masterpiece Theatre miniseries about ancient Rome, I, Claudius—invests Madame de Rosamonde, the closest thing to an undestroyed conscience and heart in the play, with maturity and understanding. Kristine Nielsen makes Cecile’s mother Madame de Volanges such a phony that the audience is immediately rooting for Valmont to make a fool of her—though the character is such an idiot that it takes her nearly the entire play to realize what he has done.

The curtain-closing scene, with its famous silhouette of the guillotine—a foreshadowing of the bloody fate awaiting this deeply corrupt society—now also includes an equally appropriate element of stage scenery, a metaphor for everything coming before it: a spider's web.

One of my favorite pastimes as a theatergoer is attending theater-enrichment activities. The Roundabout has offered a particularly stimulating example of this in its Theatre-Plus programs. And one of the best examples of the latter featured a question-and-answer period between longtime Roundabout dramaturge Ted Sod and Caroline Weber, a professor of 18th century French literature and culture at Barnard College.

Professor Weber related how, as a career soldier sidelined from the action he craved, Laclos amused himself one year by writing a novel—his only venture into the genre—about a campaign of love rather than war, but one featuring equal amounts of strategy and tactics. She pointed out an even more surprising aspect of his background: his campaign, in the form of essays, for better educational opportunities for girls. In his novel, the fate of Cecile is a stark object lesson in the dangers of the only available opportunity of the time—a convent education that left its graduates not only intellectually vacant but hopelessly gullible.

Professor Weber was one of the best lecturers in this post-discussion series that the Roundabout has ever had in the decade in which I’ve attended performances. I’m sure nearly everyone in the audience that Saturday afternoon shared my hope that the theater’s management will bring her back for an encore performance soon.

Prime Time for John Adams (And About Time!)

As long as we’re on the subject of Presidents, let’s turn to another that’s going to getting a whole lot more attention soon…

I don’t have HBO, so otherwise I’d be glued to the set tonight for the premiere of HBO’s John Adams mini-series starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. Rest assured, though, that the second I have the chance to see it on DVD, I’ll certainly do so.

Kudos to producer Tom Hanks for putting his financial muscle and prestige behind this seven-part, 8 1/2 –hour miniseries at a time when the major networks have given up the struggle to peddle anything other than reality shows or Law and Order derivatives. He’ll probably take at least some heat from historical purists about dramatic liberties taken with the patriot’s life. (And truth be told, if the offenses are particularly egregious, I’ll be one of those complaining the loudest.)

But if even only a tenth of his audience is tempted to go out and read a book about our nation’s second President, more power to Hanks, I say.

Five years ago, when I visited the house Adams owned for nearly the last 40 years of his life, I had heard that this project was in the works. But for several years afterward, I heard nothing more, and presumed that it had gotten sucked into the development hell into which most things in Hollywood (especially most things historically related) disappear. I’m all the more delighted that Hanks persevered with his dream—or that, at least at first glance, the casting of the leads looks so inspired.

I doubt that, even with so much time, the miniseries will cover all the fascinating facts about this President who lived into his nineties. But one incident I heard about at his Quincy, Mass. estate, Peacefield (an unbelievably ironic name for the home of such a contentious man), says much about why for so long he took such an underserved backseat to the other Founding Fathers.

A portrait of Adams in his home depicts him in the short, pudgy, middle-aged form that led his critics as Vice-President to call him “His Rotundity.” His eyes, flashing quickly beneath a pair of thick dark eyebrows, are matched with a scowling mouth, as if he’s beside himself that you can’t see what’s so perfectly obvious to him.

Forget about the charisma quotient of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, JFK, or other politicos of relatively recent vintage—Adams is not even in the same league as contemporaries from his own less mediagenic age, the calmly impressive Washington or the amiable Jefferson.

As you might expect, Adams loathed this picture so thoroughly that his descendants hung it in an unlit corner of the butler’s pantry.

No doubt, Adams and his descendants would have withered in the glare of 21st century cameras and the 24-hour news cycle. Sometimes, as in the case of the portrait, their own willfulness has pushed them into history’s shadows.

But these days, the family is getting its day in the sun. With his best-selling biography, David McCullough performed for Adams what he did for Harry Truman—inspired a serious reevaluation of a politician constantly underestimated even in his own lifetime.

For an age grown cynical about the constant spinning and occasional dalliances of politicians (Eliot Spitzer, come out of hiding, you steamrolling fool!), the blunt Adams, who lavished no endearments on opponents but many on his wife and soulmate Abigail, finally looks ready for prime time.

Peacefield—affectionately known as “The Old House” by later generations of the family—sustained not only John Adams but his John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States; grandson Charles Francis Adams, the congressman and diplomat who persuaded the British government not to recognize the Confederacy during the Civil War; and great-grandsons Henry and Brooks Adams, who won fame not by participating in history but by writing about it.

The family needed whatever serenity they could find in this house. For all the high intelligence, integrity, and unswerving patriotism that enabled the Adamses to achieve greatness, they also suffered unrelenting, even puritanical pursuit of perfection, overwhelming depression, and tragedy when they couldn’t measure up to the near-impossible standards they set for themselves.

The Old House is just one part of the Adams National Historic Park, which is administered by the National Park Service. The “park” consists of six buildings, located within a five-minute drive of each other. The other buildings consist of a visitors center, an adjacent parking lot, the adjacent birthplaces of the two Presidents, and United First Parish Church, where father and son are laid to rest with their wives. It’s a bit hard to transport yourself mentally from the bustling inner-suburban feel of Quincy today to the more serene, pastoral setting of Adams’ time, but it’s worth the effort.

Adams had his moments when he acted insanely (standing up on a table and hurling his wig at Cabinet members who enraged him, as related by biographer Joseph Ellis in the “American Experience” episode “John & Abigail Adams,” would probably count as one of these).

But he deserves to be taken out of the dark corner where he’s been hidden for so long and placed in the American pantheon where his devotion to principle, honesty and courage entitle him. With any justice, the HBO series will help in the effort to do so.