Playwright: Pierre Choderlos de Lacols, translated by Christopher Hampton . At: Remy Bumppo Theatre at the Greenhouse Theatre Center, 2257 N. Lincoln. Phone: 773-404-7336; $35-$50. Runs through: May 2
Merge the wiles of Machiavelli with the allure of Salome and you've got Madame de Merteiul. When it comes to the rules of attraction during the opulent, 1780s France of Louis the Last, she's a woman of no illusions and thus, infinite power.
"Love isn't something you fall into," she notes early in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Then comes her philosophy's killer conclusion, delivered in an understated tone that's the vocal equivalent of a guillotine dropping: "Love is something you use." Whoosh, clang. You can practically hear the metaphoric blade whistling through the air in the opening scene of Remy Bumppo's staging. There will be blood. Or at the very least, broken, mortally wounded hearts.
For the first few moments it seems that surely nothing short of Madame La Guillotine could best Madame de Merteiul. And then: Enter Le Vicomte de Valmont, a virtuoso of deceit who never opens his mouth without first calculating how much damage he can inflict by doing so. Together, they are sexual napalm. Let the explosive games begin.
And so they do in director David Darlow's smart staging of Liaisons. As master manipulators on the sexual chess board in this wickedly elegant and delightfully tawdry story, Nick Sandys ( Valmont ) and Rebecca Spence ( Merteuil ) are paragons of strategic trickery. She's ice queen on the outside, inferno on the inside, a woman born to avenge her own oppressed sex while dominating the other. As for Sandys, he seduces lusty courtesans and innocent damsels with equal finesse, framing physical questions that utterly "preclude the answer no." Arguably ( but not by much ) one of Chicago's finest fight choreographers, Sandys also displays some spectacular swordsmanship swashbuckling through the piece's climactic duel.
Yet for all its pleasures, this isn't a faultless production. Linda Gillum is miscast as the virtuous Madame de Tourvel. Gillum's a natural beauty, but here, she's inexplicably fuglied upcertainly not the sort of woman either in brain or beauty who could ultimately defeat Valmont at his own game.
Also wilting the drama's potency: Countless blackout scene changes ( as in, we literally we lost count ) wherein a certain piece of furniture becomes a lumberingly ineffective ( and unintentionally comical ) star.
Still, the assets overpower the detractions. Annabel Armour radiates the wisdom and beauty of a woman d'une age certain as Valmont's aunt. Margaret Katch and Greg Matthew Anderson are deliciously attractive as baby bunny-like ingénues who believe the wolfishly predatory Valmont and Merteuil are their bosom friends.
And in the final seconds of the piece, sound designer Jason Knox offers an effect that puts all the era's conniving decadence in lethal perspective, a few sharp seconds of audio that invoke the fatal attractions looming just around the decade.