Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the National Theatre review: Lesley Manville alone is worth the price of admission

Lesley Manville (Marquise de Merteuil) - (Sarah Lee)

Best. Entrance. Ever. Lesley Manville sweeps in a scarlet hooped dress onto the bare vastness of the Lyttelton stage through a door in a wall of mirrors, beneath a frieze of nudes and a giant, ribbed, candlelit globe. As the Marquise de Merteuil, a widow who breaks hearts and ruins reputations for her own wicked pleasure in 1780s French society, the implacable, raptor-ish Manville absolutely owns this show.

She has strong support from an amusedly saturnine Aidan Turner as her partner in seduction Valmont. And from Monica Barbaro, the young American film star making an elegant stage debut here as Madame de Tourvel, the virtuous woman Valmont despoils as part of a wager with the Marquise. But the Marquise’s line to Valmont - “remember, I do this better than you” – could equally apply to Manville herself.