LES LIAISONS DANGERUESES
by Christopher Hampton
based on an eighteenth-century French original

Performed by Lancaster University Theatre Group
in association with
Lancaster University Fencing Club

The Grand Theatre, St Leondardgate, Lancaster
Thursday 2 and Friday 3 June 2005

A fine production of a sexual masterpiece

‘Dodgy relationships' is perhaps the most direct translation of the title of this wild and wonderful work by playwright, film-maker and translator Christopher Hampton (b1945).

Based on a novel written by the obscure and time-serving Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos (1741 – 1803), it tells of seduction, secrets, shame and servitude in pre-Revolutionary France.

An "extraordinary and meteoric work', is how Hampton describes his original, and his wonderfully acute translation strikes contemporary ears as a cross between Wilde and Molière, Racine and Rimbault. The action is pretty in-your-face shameless, too – there is as much complexity in the sexual intercourse as there is in the social.

It's almost like ‘dogging' at the Court of the Sun King… oh, and one of the young ladies is well under sixteen. The action is as bang up to date as the sparkling dialogue.

Director Leona Donnelly and her team of actors, crew and others did the work fine service. Right from curtain up, we knew we were in the land of the nobilité, and a huge, gilded mirror suspended regally above the red, (mostly) opulent furnishings set a fine scene for the aristocrats' baroque philanderings and intrigues.

The acting, as well as the staging and other production factors also conveyed the rich complexity and Machiavellian intrigues and deceptions of the hugely complex and enjoyable plot. Young Rob Haughton made a good shot at the male lead (I can't in all honesty call Le Viscomte de Valmont a hero), though I think some critics may have preferred a more sinister, more overtly hornier Cassanovian approach rather than Haughton's debonair froideur.

Still, the rôle worked as played; as he found himself the inexorable victim of his own devices, one found it easier to sympathise with his roué ruiné than with a defeated butch Blackadder.

The leading ladies – well hardly, women – were equally impressive. Tessa Buddle as the Viscomte's opposite, La Marquise de Merteuil, and Sarah Gilbert as the wickedly droll and outrageously passionate Madame de Tourvel were particularly well-drawn characters whose presence one was never allowed to ignore. The other parts, too, were also played well, though some more general Gallic ‘oomph' could have added further differentiation, nuance and spice to the decadent and deadly confection.

Of particular mention was the novel association with Tori Roberts of Lancaster University's Fencing Club. Eighteenth-century France was the age of the duel, and the inevitable trial by arms towards the end of the play was finely and stylishly executed (and I gather the cause of much fun and equal fear during rehearsals).

All in all, then, a creditable performance of a fine and under-rated piece which should be staged more often. It was a shame that the theatre was so empty – but I had hardly seen any publicity on-line, in the town, in the press. After LUTG's first venture in The Grand, the excellent and well-packed Frankenstein, it was a shame that the momentum did not extend to this succès de scandale.

Copyright © 8 June 2005 Michael Nunn