Dramaworks’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses – Duplicity and Hedonism Abound

I remember seeing some of Molière’s light and relatively harmless farces.   Perhaps I was expecting something along those lines, but Molière wrote a century earlier.  He never would have thought of writing the scandalous subject matter taken on by Choderlos de Laclos who wrote the epistolary novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses on which Christopher Hampton’s play is based.  It is quite a study in changing mores foreshadowing the downfall of a depraved class. I come to this play with a particular advantage (or perhaps disadvantage) -- I’ve never seen the movie (or the play)! 

The play depicts games of humiliation and deceit, waged by arrogant aristocrats who preen with a sense of invulnerability, using treachery, sexual perversion, and degradation as their weapons.  Are these merely the games of the leisure class, a decadent society that is about to be destroyed in pre revolutionary France or is it a more universal theme?  The fact that Choderlos de Laclos’ novel has endured since 1782, and serves as the basis for a contemporary play, which was then reincarnated into a movie, seems to answer the latter question.  Think of today’s popular culture, the heartless “reality shows,” the treachery played out every day in corporatocracy and government, and the Internet affording abundant opportunities for narcissism and voyeurism, as just some of the manifestations.   Human nature is, well, human nature. 

Maribeth Graham, Harriet Oser, Kate Hampton

Two former lovers, aristocrats suffering from a severe case of ennui, Le Vicomte de Valmont (Jim Ballard) and La Marquise de Merteuil (Kate Hampton), for their own complicitous amusement set out to destroy some lives in their social circle.  Merteuil wants Valmont to seduce a young girl straight out of a convent, Cécile Volanges (Kelly Gibson) to settle a score.  “Too easy” responds Valmont who has his eyes on another more challenging target, the highly principled (and married) La Présidente de Tourvel (Katie Fabel).  Merteuil finally promises Valmont that if he can produce “written proof” of seducing Tourvel, she would have sex with him.  Meanwhile Cécile and her music teacher, Le Chevalier Danceny (Brian William Sheppard) have fallen in love.  And Valmont has learned that Cécile’s mother, Madame de Volanges (Maribeth Graham), has written to Tourvel calling him a “pervert.”  He now seeks revenge by bedding Cécile, Merteuil’s original intended target.  So the stage is set.  Merteuil and Valmont devise a scheme to trick Danceny and Cécile into their confidence.  From there the rest of the plot unfolds almost from its own internal energy, imbued with intrigue, deceit and sexual maneuverings.  And the actions of our villains have consequences in the end, circling back to them. The guillotine awaits them all!

Jim Ballard and Katie Fabel

Central to the play is the sexual, competitive tension between Ballard and Hampton pulling the strings of the other players, frequently with soap-operatic overtones.  Ballard plays his part with an arrogantly superior and disdainful demeanor but with a hint of humanity and, ultimately, vulnerability, while Hampton is the more malevolent predator.  In fact, Hampton’s Merteuil strikes me as a sociopath, whose verbal interactions can out maneuver any of the play’s characters, including Valmont who excels in persuasive rhetoric when it comes to bedding a woman.  Hampton comports herself with an untouchable imperiousness, and her power over the other characters is absolute.   She also gives voice to feminist rage -- after all, this was a society that was male dominated, and Merteuil seeks revenge on that score as well. One tell-tale exchange between she and Valmont seems to sum up her entire being, after Valmont asks I often wonder how you managed to invent yourself.  Merteuil replies I had no choice, did I, I’m a woman.  Women are obliged to be far more skilful than men, because who ever wastes time cultivating inessential skills?  You think you put as much ingenuity into winning us as we put into losing: well, it’s debatable, I suppose, but from then on, you hold the ace in the pack.  You can ruin us whenever the fancy takes you:  all we can achieve by denouncing you is to enhance your prestige.  We can’t even get rid of you when we want to: we’re compelled to unstitch, painstakingly, what you would just cut through.  We either have to devise some way of making you want to leave us, so you’ll feel guilty to harm us; or find a reliable means of blackmail:  otherwise you can destroy our reputation and our life with a few well-chosen words.  So of course I had to invent:  not only myself, but was of escape no one else has ever thought of, not even I, because I had to be fast enough on my feet to know how to improvise.  And I’ve succeeded, because I always knew I was born to dominate your sex and avenge my own.

The Dramaworks production is ambitious, twelve actors in a relatively small space with multiple scene changes, but the theatre company is up to the challenge.   The Director (Lynnette Barkley), the costume designer (Brian O'Keefe), the scenic designer (Victor Becker), the lighting designer (Jerold R. Forsyth) and the sound designer (Steve Shapiro) bring this period piece to life.  Barkley has a specific vision and coming from an extensive background of musical theatre and choreography, this production benefits from that skill.  (I loved the opening sequence of all the actors briefly posing “tableaux vivants” before the action begins, like a big production number of a musical.) There are eighteen scenes (too many, but that is what the play calls for) and Barkley tries to minimize interruptions of the action -- no blackouts and minimal moving of furniture -- so the many scene changes are as fluid as feasible, enhanced by Becker’s clever scenic design, and Forsyth’s lighting, moving from “sensual” to “cold and angry” and Shapiro’s selection of musical interludes for those changes – “to keep the energy going.” 

Les Liaisons Dangereuses Set

The details of costumes and scenery are extraordinary.  Ninety percent of the 18^th century furniture on the stage is original, not replicas.  The elaborate gold leaf railings and balusters were all welded in the Dramaworks shop.  There are 26 costumes for 12 actors and as the play takes place over three months, the changes are designed to connote the passage of time. Brian O'Keefe's costumes are spectacular!  (And kudos to the wig designer, Omayra Diaz Rodriguez.) Finally, there is a revolving staircase to assist with the multiple scenic changes.  It is a formidable undertaking for a regional theatre.

But essentially Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a cerebral play – and a long one too, clocking in at almost three hours including intermission --  and although hearts are broken on stage, and there are several redeeming comic elements such as the scene where Valmont dictates a letter intended for his love, Tourvel, while he is having sex with his courtesan, Emilie (well played by Nanique Gheridian, a founding member of Dramaworks) with double entendres abounding, it is a play which may fail to capture the audience’s heart.  (Do we really care about these characters?) My lovely wife, Ann, is away right now, and I usually judge the poignancy of a play by the number of tissues she goes through.  By that anecdotal metric, this probably would be a zero tissue play.  Nonetheless, Les Liaisons Dangereuses is well worth seeing for the costume pageantry and the script’s barbed wit alone.

Another Holiday Ritual

There’s a corollary to sending out Holiday Cards: receiving cards and then coming to the point of having to throw them out.  We keep a list of names and addresses so we have a checklist of the people we’ve sent and received cards from.  Over the years, that list has declined from hundreds, and then leveled off to about a hundred, and now to less than a hundred.  Death, and the attrition of friends with whom we now have only a superficial relationship are the main reasons for the decline, and some have gone the Email route to express their holiday greetings.  We still like to send a card and put a stamp on an envelope but probably that too will fall by the wayside one of these days.

I feel a sense of sadness when old friends or former colleagues suddenly disappear from our checklist.  Of course circumstances change and old relationships not actively maintained are the main culprits.  As much our fault as theirs.  On the other hand there are people with whom we exchange cards, year after year, although our contact with them from decades ago was strictly accidental and passing.  

One such exchange is with Bianca, the woman Ann shared a hospital room with when our son Jonathan was born.  I think we visited one another a few times after the respective births of our sons more than three decades ago, but outside of that, the only contact we’ve had has been those holiday card exchanges, she commenting on her son’s progress in life and we doing the same.  It is a touching tradition and we look forward to those holiday updates as our sons navigate their lives, born on the same day and at almost the same moment.

Another holiday card exchange is truly remarkable.  As the New Year was turning from 1989 to 1990, I had a business trip to Japan and decided to take Ann and Jonathan (his first such trip, being only 12 years old at the time).   

While I was meeting with our host, a Japanese bookseller in Tokyo one day (this photo is of us, he and his wife in front of our hotel), Ann and Jonathan decided to take the underground to the Ginza area to shop and have lunch.  As they were finishing their meal, Ann remarked to Jonathan that she thought a fellow diner appeared to have been listening very attentively to their conversation.  Ann smiled at her and shortly afterward a very demure looking older Japanese woman came over to their table and in very correct English apologized for appearing to be overhearing their conversation.  She went on to say “I hope you will pardon me, I do not mean to interrupt, but may I ask where you are from?”  Ann was a little surprised as it was quite unusual to hear a Japanese person speaking English so well.  

So Ann replied and the woman asked whether she could move next to them and talk to them a little as she had so few opportunities to speak to native English speakers.  She explained that she was a language teacher in her nearby home town of Yokohama.

By all means Ann said and so throughout the rest their meal, the three of them talked.  They hit it off!  She introduced herself as Mrs. Murakami, and invited Ann and Jonathan to be her guests at a specialty dessert shop down the street.  They continued to talk and then Mrs. Murakami did something very uncharacteristic of the Japanese, she invited us all for tea and lunch and to see her ancestral home in Yokohama where she and her husband lived.  Ann accepted knowing we were free that following Saturday.   

So off to Yokohama we went where she met us at the train station to help us find the house, situated in the prime spot at the top of a hill.  Although not a house the size of most average American homes, it was very large by Japanese standards.  But it had been handed down from generation to generation in her family and was highly treasured.  We were cordially welcomed by other members of her family and led into the living room and seated in places of honor.  This room also serves as a bedroom where tatami mats are placed on the floor for sleeping. After a small meal concluded with tea, we were given a short tour of the rest of the house, in particular one room devoted to the worship of her ancestors, where a shrine was adorned with candles.

The following year, we decided to send her a holiday card and she sent us one as well, the two crossing in the mail.  Since then, we have not missed a Christmas holiday without sending a card and note to her as well as she to us. 

As it turns out, Ann and Mrs. Murakami had a chance to renew their acquaintance ten years later, in 1998, when we flew to Japan to visit Jonathan, then spending his junior year at Doshisha University in Kyoto.  Mrs. Murakami treated Ann to an extraordinary luncheon where no menus were presented, exquisite small dishes just kept arriving at their table for almost 2 hours.  Ann remembers thinking that that was the most gastronomically incredible meal she has ever had!

However, this year we didn’t receive a card and we were worried, knowing Mrs. Murakami is about ten years our senior.  We were about to put our list away and suddenly there appeared an envelope from Japan and we could tell by the handwriting that it was from her.  We were elated.

Inside the card was a very neatly handwritten note as follows:

Dear Ann,

   Thank you very much for your 26^th Christmas card.  It gives me courage for life.  The picture of you two is so wonderful and you are as young as you are when I saw you for the first time in Tokyo.  I am not so fine.  I was in a hospital ten days this summer and next year I will have an operation on my eye.  But fortunately I can attend the class of Reading Shakespeare two times a month.  We have spent twenty years now.  Still we have seven plays ahead of us.  Every member is around eighty years old.

   Please tell my best regard to your dear son Jonathan.  I wish you all Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

With love, Toshiko

Indeed, Toshiko, your note too gives us “courage of life.”