#1
Posted: 5/1/08 at 8:00pm
Rave from the AP:
"Maliciousness is in full flower at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre, where the Roundabout Theatre Company's stylish revival of Christopher Hampton's delightfully decadent "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is on display.
Hampton's take-no-prisoners battle of the sexes — based on the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos — has been given an enormously entertaining production by Rufus Norris. The director has chosen well in casting the generals who command each side in this war that never ends. And although they may be opposing forces, these leaders of 18th-century French aristocracy are often in cahoots in their plotting of destruction for destruction's sake, the sheer joy of ruination. Power trumps everything.
On one side, we have Le Vicomte de Valmont, portrayed with swaggering narcissism by Ben Daniels. As another character in the play says of Valmont, he "never opens his mouth without first calculating what damage he can do," and the serpentine Daniels makes the man's determination to do evil fascinating to watch.
Valmont is matched by La Marquise de Merteuil, played by the excellent Laura Linney with a pursed-lip disdain that creeps out from behind an icy politeness. Manners are important to these folks; morals are not."
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/01/arts/Theater-Liaisons-Dangereuses.php
"Maliciousness is in full flower at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre, where the Roundabout Theatre Company's stylish revival of Christopher Hampton's delightfully decadent "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is on display.
Hampton's take-no-prisoners battle of the sexes — based on the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos — has been given an enormously entertaining production by Rufus Norris. The director has chosen well in casting the generals who command each side in this war that never ends. And although they may be opposing forces, these leaders of 18th-century French aristocracy are often in cahoots in their plotting of destruction for destruction's sake, the sheer joy of ruination. Power trumps everything.
On one side, we have Le Vicomte de Valmont, portrayed with swaggering narcissism by Ben Daniels. As another character in the play says of Valmont, he "never opens his mouth without first calculating what damage he can do," and the serpentine Daniels makes the man's determination to do evil fascinating to watch.
Valmont is matched by La Marquise de Merteuil, played by the excellent Laura Linney with a pursed-lip disdain that creeps out from behind an icy politeness. Manners are important to these folks; morals are not."
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/01/arts/Theater-Liaisons-Dangereuses.php
