Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Stage Play
By: Choderlos de Laclos / Narrated By: Dominic West, Janet McTeer, Una Stubbs, Elaine Cassidy, Adjoa Andoh, Edward Holcroft, Morfydd Clark
Length: 2 hrs and 9 mins
French noblemen with English accents? Yesssss… An abridgment? Hmmmm….
I hear-tell, from reading other reviews, that this ditty, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, is abridged? Now y’all know I haaaaate that. And indeed, everything comes to a head all of a sudden in this audiobook, with all SORTS of crud hitting the fan in the last 20 minutes or so. Does that mean it is truly abridged (I realize this is a Performance, thus cutting time, but the book is over 400 pages, so that’s a helluva lot of cut time…?) Dunno, let’s see what-all DID happen.
The Marquise (The exQUIsite Janet McTeer) and the Vicomte (HiLARiously done by Dominic West) are a dastardly pair. After getting unceremoniously dumped by the lover d’jour, the Marquise is NOT in a good mood. She hatches a wretched scheme and draws the Vicomte in. The two have been passionate lovers in the past, but now they just egg each other on as each carries on hither and thither with various liaisons. And seeing as the Marquise is peeved with her ex-lover, she’s aaaaallll for undoing a young virginal girl who’s attracted his attention. The Vicomte is all busy with his own affairs, seeking to seduce a young married woman whose husband is away for the time being, so he’s kinda sorta not up for such shenanigans at the moment.
But when he discovers that his Lady has been warned off by the virginal gal’s mama? Oooooh, now HE’S peeved as well, and so this duo are in business.
Cloistered together in opulent surroundings in the French countryside, the Vicomte sets himself up as The ONLY Person who can keep the two younguns (Said ex-lover and his virginal miss) together by surreptitiously passing love letters between the two. He even gets a key to young Cécile’s bedroom in the name of being able to scurry in to deposit letters without anyone noticing. Aha! and Nooooo!!! Because at one point he lets himself in whilst she’s sleeping, and? The brute initiates her into the ways of Passion, which freaks her out until she’s shamed into submitting by her dearest confidante, who just haaaaapens to be the Marquise.
Soon, things are getting SOOOO out of hand, emotions are involved, and the Marquise starts sniping at the Vicomte who’s unutterably bemused, until she crosses The Line! At which point, all is fair in love and war, and the two are now at war with each other. It’s every Man/Woman for him/herself!
Aside from some jangly interstitial music that grated on my ears, and aside from the English accents, this all played rather well. It’s suPREMEly well-acted tho’ at first I felt the Vicomte’s love, Madame de Tourvel (Elaine Cassidy) sounded far too young. But she was such an innocent as well, a stickler for rules and her values, and some of her arguments were such nonsense, that I came to see her as just as naive, just as much a babe in the woods compared to the smooth Vicomte—She was helpless against his machinations! And while yes, I loved Janet McTeer’s performance (My could she seeeeeethe, or what?), I was truly enchanted by Dominic West as the Vicomte. He was sooo shameless, so breezy about seducing and ruining women, so confused by the increasingly amped up Marquise, that I felt his was THE performance of the entire thing.
Things are sexy and fraught, and it’s a marvel that this was published in the 1700s; gosh it musta been beyond titillating for the time. Heck, it’s titillating NOW. A trifle steamy, a trifle sad, but always amusing, this is indeed a delightful way to spend juuuuust over 2-hours. Not like the movie as I remember it, but still jam-packed with the clueless being led by the monstrous and unfeeling. Tragedy was never so enjoyable as this…!
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