Laura Linney lusts after Tony Award in 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses'
"Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is a provocative play about passion in 18th century Paris that returns to the rialto 21 years after it went 0 for 7 at the 1987 Tony Awards. ("We were up against August Wilson's 'Fences,' which swept everything," playwright Christopher Hampton tells Gold Derby. "We didn't have a prayer.") Hampton did go on to win the Oscar the following year for adapting his script for Glenn Close and John Malkovich. This well-received Roundabout stage revival now stars two-time Tony nominee Laura Linney and British heartthrob Ben Daniels in the plum roles of the calculating countess and her playboy pawn.
The show led among plays at the Outer Critics Circle with nine noms, including best revival as well as nods for the stars who are also among the 69 actors competing for the distinguished performance prize from the Drama League. While it fared less well with the Drama Desk, picking up only two technical nods, expect it to figure in many Tony races when those nominations are announced May 13.
In his three-star review, Clive Barnes of the New York Post asks: "What is there not to like in 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses'? As revived last night by the Roundabout, Christopher Hampton's play is sensual, oddly naughty and totally, impassively immoral. That sensuality is neatly caught by Rufus Norris' elegantly paced staging and the leads: the couthly chilly Laura Linney, as La Marquise de Merteuil, and a splendiferous Ben Daniels, enjoyably snakelike as the urbane Le Vicomte de Valmont."
In her three-star review, Elysa Gardner of USA Today says, "Linney portrays the impervious elegance of a certain type of society woman as ably as Close did. But Linney also transmits an inescapable warmth, making the Marquise's ability to disarm her victims completely convincing, while giving us scrupulously subtle glimpses of her enduring ardor for Valmont. The witty Daniels, in contrast, seems impenetrable, at least until we grasp the full extent of Valmont's feelings for the virtuous Madame de Tourvel, whose honor he intends to destroy for reasons more complicated than he realizes. When forced to confront his love for this married woman, and how he has hurt her, Daniels powerfully evokes his ravaging guilt and regret."
Joe Dziemianowicz of the New York Daily News also gave the show three stars. He thought, "Laura Linney steps into the role and delivers a mesmerizing performance as she all but disappears into pre-revolutionary France of the 1780s. British actor Ben Daniels is bold and lusty (but not creepy, like John Malkovich's celluloid version) as the ravenous Valmont, whose mission is to seduce two women: Virginal Cecile (a high-spirited Mamie Gummer) and pious, married La Presidente de Tourvel (Jessica Collins)."
As per Frank Scheck of Reuters: "Returning to Broadway for its first revival since its 1987 premiere, 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' proves itself as relevant as ever in its depiction of malicious sexual game-playing. Christopher Hampton's masterful adaptation of the classic 1782 French epistolary novel receives an excellent treatment in the hands of director Rufus Norris and a cast headlined by Laura Linney and, making his New York stage debut, British actor Ben Daniels."
For Michael Kuchwara of the Associated Press, "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. The playwright's language is almost classical in nature, and the performers handle it well. Daniels, a British actor making his Broadway debut, revels in the epigrammatic dialogue. So does Linney, particularly in Merteuil's tart observations about the role of women in a sexist society."
However, Ben Brantley of the New York Times was less impressed: "Hedonism becomes a gravitational force in Ben Daniels’s compelling turn as an 18th-century libertine in 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses,' which opened Thursday night in an eye-filling, very imbalanced revival at the American Airlines Theater. Making a sensational Broadway debut in Rufus Norris’s production, which also stars an uncomfortably cast Laura Linney, this London actor seems at all times pulled, pummeled and shaped by the prospect of physical pleasure. Unfortunately no one else in this revival approaches Mr. Daniels’s level of complexity, including Ms. Linney, a wonderful actress who has been shoehorned into a part out of her natural range and is perceptibly pinched."
And David Rooney of Variety thought, "In Linney's minutely measured performance, her defeat is less in the inevitability of public rejection than in the crushing realization that she has failed ever to inspire love. Daniels takes the opposite path. A strutting cock whose insouciant body language and lascivious manner seem to advertise that his reputation as an unscrupulous roue is well earned, his Valmont struggles to maintain his insinuating bravado when love unexpectedly cracks his armor. The big problem in the drama's central triumvirate is the object of that love. Collins is sorely inadequate and unaffecting as Madame de Tourvel; her flat reading recalls the knowingly anachronistic Hollywood tack of rendering period pieces accessible via contemporary performance styles in films like 'Ever After' and 'A Knight's Tale.' Whether or not it's deliberate, the approach is dead wrong."
Photo: American Airlines Theater
