Dangerous Liaisons At The Stratford Festival
Dangerous Liaisons was a big hit for English playwright Christopher Hampton in 1985 (it won an Olivier). It has been revived regularly ever since, most recently at the Stratford Festival in 2010.
Now Dangerous Liaisons once more graces the Festival Theatre stage in a somewhat uneven production under the direction of Esther Jun. Fortunately, the plusses outweigh the minuses by a large margin, making this one of the highlights of the 2025 season.
Dangerous Liaisons is a shamelessly lascivious romp through the sexual adventures of two libertines who take great delight in puncturing the pious pretensions of ancien régime France by seducing everyone in sight and instructing their deflowered prey in the arts of love in all its infinite variety, starting with the Latin terms.
The widowed Marquise de Merteuil (Jessica B. Hill) and the Vicomte de Valmont (Jesse Gervais) are former lovers but still friends who enjoy setting amorous challenges for one another.
Merteuil, smarting from having been rudely dumped by one of her many lovers, wants Valmont to seduce the virginal Cécile (Ashley Dingwell) who is betrothed to the cad.
Too easy, says Valmont. He’d much rather seduce the impossibly upright and virtuous Madame de Tourvel (Celia Aloma).
I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to reveal that he succeeds in both endeavours with the able assistance of his loyal valet Azolan (Thomas Duplessie). He even manages to get Cécile pregnant after what looked to my unpracticed eye like a bout of anal intercourse!
Meanwhile, Merteuil is having her own bit of fun by making young Chevalier Danceny (Leon Qin), who is head over heels in love with Cécile, her toy boy.
It’s all raunchy good fun and thanks in large part to the star performances of the two leads this Dangerous Liaisons succeeds splendidly.
Hill is elegantly evil as Merteuil. The scene in which she “counsels” the ravished and distraught Cécile in the joys of sexual liberation is one of the best moments in the show.
Gervais makes for an elegant lothario. He is blessed with a beautiful speaking voice and he uses it like a rapier. He could well become one of the Festival’s great leading men.
A nod, too, to Seanna McKenna as Madame de Rosemonde, Valmont’s aunt, who seems to know just how naughty he is and who doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with that. Fun fact: In the Festival’s 2010 production McKenna played Merteuil. That’s the sort of thing that happens when you are in the same repertory company for 32 seasons!
Jun has marshalled all this talent quite well, taking the time to craft one of the funniest “turn off your cell phone” bits I’ve ever seen.
The design staff has taken any number of liberties in conjuring up eighteenth century France. The sets by Teresa Przybylski are gaudy fun and ingenious use is made of moveable, subtly mirrored partitions.
I quite enjoyed the over-the-top costumes by A. W. Nadine Grant, but sticklers for historical accuracy – and I know some – will be horrified by some of the stylistic missteps, especially the shiny synthetic fabrics.
I found the original music by Richard Feren repetitive and grating at times, but fight director Anita Nittoly contributed a dueling scene that is truly exciting, and Arun Srinivasan lit it well throughout.
Dangerous Liaisons is based on the 1782 epistolary novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. Hampton has done a good job of streamlining the story for the stage, but the original is a ripping yarn and far superior as a work of art. Indulge yourself.
Finally, I must say that I was shocked – shocked! – at the way Jun objectified men in this production. Gervais and Qin were both required to spend lengths of time stripped to the waist, subjecting their toned torsos to the lascivious female gaze.
I jest, of course. But I find it amusing that in our current cultural moment – one in which the theatre strives to be “radical” and “transgressive” – we seem to have a need to excuse our more atavistic proclivities. In her programme note, Jun urges us to see Dangerous Liaisons as “a cautionary tale of moral decay.”
Nonsense, say I. Dangerous Liaisons, in Hampton’s adaptation, is a guilty pleasure. True, Merteuil and Valmont both come a cropper, each in their own way, but I would submit that is more a dramatic device than a moral one.
I strongly suspect that the same was true for readers of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” when it became a succès de scandale in the late eighteenth century. Of course, they lived in a different time.
And they were French.
Dangerous Liaisons continues at the Festival Theatre though October 25, 2025. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Stratford Festival website.
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