Writer: Christopher Hampton
Director: Marianne Elliott
“Show no pity”, the Marquise de Merteuil advises her charges in Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and Director Marianne Elliott shows none for her characters whose attitudes and exploits are savagely punished in this outstanding revival at the National Theatre. Giving precedence to the exploitation, assaults and deceptions endured by women in the play over the louche, bad boy charm of the Vicomte de Valmont, Elliott’s control and combination of staging techniques, dance and performance offers a mercilessly contemporary commentary that looks behind the masks women must wear to survive.
Frustrated that her favourite schemer Valmont is pursuing a dutiful and married woman, the Marquise de Merteuil agrees to wager a night with herself if Valmont can produce proof that he has bedded Madame de Tourvel. But having been crossed in her own affairs by a lover who now plans to marry the virginal Cecile, she also requires Valmont to seduce the 16-year-old as punishment. It’s all great sport until the consequences of their actions rebound.
Elliott’s production takes a deconstructed approach to staging designed by Rosanna Vize, leaving plenty of room for the emotional landscape of the play to fill the Lyttleton stage. Vize’s hints of eighteenth-century grandeur are always contemporary and include mirrored walls and a globe-like chandelier that draw the themes of coercion, control and the cycles of women’s lives towards the modern audience. Natalie Roar’s costumes are glorious – Lesley Manville’s Merteuil is a scarlet vision of power and seductive prowess – yet Elliott never loses sight of her commentary, that women are exploited, oppressed and shamed, having to conceal themselves behind layers of compliance, given only two choices – control society or be consumed by it.
And this concept is powerfully played, opening with tones of the Liaisons everyone remembers; the audience chuckling at the fateful bargain that Valmont and Merteuil strike up, enjoying his naughty reputation right up until the moment he forces himself on Cecile. Suddenly, the music becomes ominous, the tone shifts, and we see him as only a predator and his actions nothing short of sexual assault. From this moment, everything unravels for the leads. The second part of the play sees the pair lose control of their game entirely, destroying everything, even themselves, and Elliott metaphorically smashes their glamorous, exciting world at a gathering pace.
An important addition to her approach is the inclusion of dance choreographed by Tom Jackson Greaves, which expands the emotional substance of the story as well as providing insightful context about its social structure. What begins as a courtly dance led by Merteuil becomes a cycle as Cecile grows to replace her, while Madame de Tourvel’s rather brief subplot is given far greater emphasis in some beautifully expressive movement as first she runs from her torrid feelings for Valmont before succumbing to them and, eventually, being devastated by heartbreak. That Valmont rejects the one true feeling in the play feels more powerful without words, raising the emotional stakes, making the consequences of his relationship with Madame de Tourvel movingly and meaningfully conveyed through dance.
Alistair Coomer and Naomi Downham can be excessively pleased with their casting, and there is electrifying chemistry between Lesley Manville’s Merteuil, Aidan Turner’s Valmont and the stage debut of Monica Barbaro as Madame de Tourvel. Manville and Turner spar brilliantly, but it is the depth of feeling, the wound that they conceal from each other, that makes this so exceptional until she is literally forced off the stage by shame, while the real love that grows between Madame de Tourvel and Valmont leaves a painful ache as he tears it apart. There’s great support from Hannah van der Westhuysen as Cecile, who takes her instruction a little too well and an excellent dance ensemble whose growing menace is perfectly pitched.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a very wordy play, so here and there the energy falters momentarily as Hampton’s exposition clogs up the flow, but Elliott’s refreshing vision only becomes more gripping as the scheme unfolds. As the lights go out, a new era has begun, but there is no need for pity, only a recognition that a terrible cycle begins again with a new set of contenders and a new game that no one will ever win.
Runs until 6 June 2026
