Reviewed by James Karas
Christopher Hampton’s exquisite play of wit, style
and cruelty, Dangerous Liaisons, is back in Stratford fifteen
years after its last production at the Stratford Festival. The play is based on
Choderlos de Laclos’ novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses about the French
nobility before the French Revolution. It makes for frightful and riveting
theatre.
Two French aristocrats, Le Vicomte de Valmont (Jesse Gervais) and La Marquise de Merteuil (Jessica B. Hill) are polished, civilized and well-behaved people who happen to have a penchant for revenge and destroying lives for the fun of it. But it is all done with style, subtlety and panache.
The Marquise and Valmont were lovers, but the relationship fell apart. Now she wants to get even with Madame de Volanges (Nadine Villasin) by having Valmont seduce her teenage daughter Cecile (Ashley Dingwel) who just left the convent. She is innocent, naïve, pretty and pure. Valmont, a man of the world with extensive experience with women, considers the task beneath his talents and rejects the proposal.
Valmont has his eye on a more difficult and desirable target. He wants to seduce Madame de Tourvel, (Celia Aloma) who is beautiful, religious, virtuous, and faithful to her husband. He wants more than a simple sexual conquest. He wants to conquer her while she keeps her virtues intact and falls in love with him and gives herself to him. In short, he wants to destroy her moral world and destroy her completely when he has sex with her and rejects her. This will require brilliant tactics, persuasive powers and fraud on a massive scale. He has the amoral and intellectual capacity to achieve total victory.
Madame Volanges has spoken ill of him and Valmont decides to seduce the hapless Cecile. He uses his usual cunning to achieve that while pretending to help her with a budding relationship with the young Chevalier Danceny.
Merteuil and Valmont have a complex relationship that he tries to rekindle but she holds him at arme’s length. She promises a night with him if he brings written proof of his conquest of Tourvel. Merteuil is crueler than Valmont, if that is possible.
Jessica B. Hill as La Marquise de Merteuil and
Seana McKenna as Madame de Rosemonde in
Dangerous Liaisons. Stratford Festival 2025. Photo: David Hou
Valmont seduces Cecile but director Esther Jun censors the scene. The directions for the scene in the text indicate that Valmont places his hand where he shouldn’t, he takes his hand away as Cecile stares in amazement. You can imagine the rest but Jun finishes the scene before we get to the climax.
The production takes us through most of the text but its success is mixed. There are some lively, dramatic scenes laced with humour. But there are also scenes where the production is flat. Some of the dialogue is not heard and that is inexcusable. The old rule that the actors should speak to the last row in the theatre is not always followed.
Hill’s Merteuil shows her metal as a liberated woman who does not take orders from men and her evil side of wanting revenge against all who cross her including Valmont. Vilasin’s Volange is also effective as the would-be upstanding mother who has a checkered past in bedroom experiences.
Gervais as Valmont and Aloma as Tourvel lack the passion, real or pretended, that we expect. At times they appear almost flat. Did Jun simply allow that? It’s hard to go wrong with Liaisons but you can do a lot better. And the word censorship should not be heard there. If your sensibilities are that delicate, stay home.
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Dangerous Liaisons by Christopher Hampton opened on August 22 and will run until October 25, 2025, at the Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario. www.stratfordfestival.ca
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