A cluster of diamonds glitter around her neck and on her earrings. Lynne Seymour’s Marquise de Merteuil is similar. Kathryn Dimery has copper hair piled high and a jutting piece of headgear that adds six inches to her stature. The dress is themed to be as dark as the action. His achievement, possibly a motivation too, is to wipe out any memory of all those creams and whites in which the film dressed Michelle Pfeiffer and Glenn Close. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is also his own costume designer. That Matthew Bulgo’s Comte de Gercourt is three times her age is of no account. As for Kathryn Dimery’s Madame de Volange daughter Cecile is little more than prospective marriage material for social and monetary advantage. In a small but clever touch in Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’ direction a passing physical gesture on the part of Christine Pritchard’s Madame de Rosemond’s to her nephew signifies her tacit approval of his behaviour. It is a pointer that the characters are barely family, and where family does exist it makes faint claim to any moral tutelage. It is very Mappa Mundi, but the choice of music is also clever. The lights go down and the cast of eight, lit from behind, assembles for a formal dance except that the harpsichord has been overlaid with Adam and the Ants’“We are Family” underpinned by a ferocious drumming. As an audience we know exactly where we are, prepared for a play set in pre-revolutionary France, all taffetas, grace and aristocracy. Mappa Mundi’s Dangerous Liaisons will be a new adaptation of the original novel, and follows their previous successful adaptations of Canterbury Tales and Moll Flanders.ĭangerous Liaisons gave 38 performances to 24 venues, playing to a total audience of 4,324 across the run.Īnother Classy Production from Mappa Mundiĭangerous Liaisons by Mappa Mundi / Theatr Mwldan Lilting harpsichord music fills the auditorium. This new production of Dangerous Liaisons is a treat for the senses: Mappa Mundi recreates in its own indomitable style the spectacle and squalor of French society at the moment it was to change forever.
DANGEROUS LIAISONS BROADWAY REVIEW SERIES
The story unfolds through a series of letters written by the idle rich, as each missive exposes plots and counterplots until sexual corruption and the desire for vengeance propels the story to its tragic ending.īringing to it the panache and flair which theatre audiences have long associated with Mappa Mundi’s work, Dangerous Liaisons is sophisticated, witty, yet raucous it is dark, sensual, and insightful. This is a society in which the most innocent and noble-minded become the sexual prey of a couple of bored and decadent ex-lovers, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, having both ice-cold revenge and sizzling seduction on their minds. Set amongst the glittering chandeliers and marble salons of Paris, Dangerous Liaisons exposes the seedy reality of the rarefied microcosm of the old French aristocracy. In 2010 Mappa Mundi turned their attention to Dangerous Liaisons, a new stage adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 novel of lust, greed, deception, and romance.Ī sumptuously mounted celebration of artful wickedness, betrayal, and sexual intrigue among depraved 18th-century French aristocrats, Dangerous Liaisons offered audiences seductively decadent fun. “ Le Vicomte de Valmont is conspicuously charming and never opens his mouth without first calculating what damage he can do.” Mme.
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