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LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 21 Apr- Sat 20 May
In a secular culture, where we have little real access to the absolute, love is perhaps the last all-encompassing and complete experience we have left to us. But maybe because of this totality of experience, its capacity to render one vulnerable makes it a very dangerous emotion, against which we guard with a number of devices. Christopher Hampton’s version of Choderlos de Laclos’ celebrated novel tackles these issues with distinction, as its long life on the West End attested. We’re in a similar territory to the celebrated film, but there are substantial differences of nuance that make this version well worth the watch.
In it, we meet a group of decadent French aristos who employ love and sexuality as a means to an end, yet director John Dove, who Lyceum patrons may remember for his distinguished Death of a Salesman a couple of years back, insists that there is a tenderness under the narrative. For him the apparently fireproof philanderer Valmont and his prey Madame de Tourvel have much to tell us about modern love. ‘Valmont takes us on a journey without quite realising it, because he's fallen in love.‘ says Dove. ‘He begins to commit to life, where before, sexual dalliances were about playing a game. He falls in love with Madam de Tourvel, and part of that is about being attracted to her, but he discovers part of it is about deeper things.‘
Yet there’s no shortage of cynicism in the games we play around love. Dove insists, though, that here we need to find the tenderness underneath to understand this piece. ‘People utter cynical lines, but that’s often just a self- defence, because they’re frightened, or trying to make an impression, or genuinely lost. If you can find the human reason behind it, you can make the thing alive’, he says. With Dougald Bruce Lockhart, who has distinguished himself in Faust and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof earlier this Lyceum season, and Candida Benson, whose work at the Citizens’ of recent years has cut some strong credentials as Valmont and Tourvel, a generally strong cast looks set to please. (Steve Cramer)
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