-in-Les-Liaisons-Dangereuses-at-the-National-Theatre--Photogra.jpeg?width=1200&auto=webp&crop=3%3A2)
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.
She was in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s original hit production of Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of Laclos’ novel back in 1985, as Cécile, the virgin ingenue Valmont also depraves, almost to keep his hand in (as it were). That production transferred to the West End and Broadway, its significance sealed by Stephen Frears’ starry 1988 film adaptation. In this precise, stately, sometimes ponderous revival by Marianne Elliott, the script is more self-consciously aphoristic than I remember. Many of the lines sound like they’re designed to be quoted rather than just spoken.
Elliot also introduces passages of choreography by Tom Jackson Greaves, mostly to express Madame de Tourvel’s torridly warring emotions, and beautifully executed by Barbaro, who trained in dance before starring in Top Gun: Maverick and A Complete Unknown. But there’s also a chorus of men, all dressed in versions of Valmont’s intensely desirable fur-shawled coat, who crowd around and spy on the women.
-and-Lesley-Manville-(Marquise-de-Merteuil)-in-Les-Liaisons-Dangere.jpeg?trim=292%2C0%2C1%2C0)
The intention is to emphasise that this remains a man’s world, but the effect is unintentionally funny. There’s no lack of contemporary examples of predators who use sex as an exercise of power but the show doesn’t feel particularly timely or hard-hitting. Partly this is because Turner’s Valmont is played for comedy, always at an ironic remove from his lascivious manoeuvres, metaphorically winking at his own cynically handsome priapism.
Apart from the coat, he’s lumbered by costume designer Natalie Roar with a bizarre triple-breasted, semi-brocaded jacket, by the way: but her frocks for the women are gorgeous, with a hint of BDSM and fetish in the lace masks, straps and latex sleeves. The whole thing looks – if you’ll pardon the pun – ravishing. Partitions pop out of that mirrored wall in Rosanna Vize’s set like Tetris blocks, to be configured into drawing rooms and bedchambers. Servants scuttle past murmuring doorways.
Hannah van der Westhuysen makes a striking impression as this production’s Cécile, her sudden medical emergency during the ballroom scene a moment of high drama. Darragh Hand, as Cécile’s earnest, impoverished lover Danceny is an oafishly-grinning blank. One can’t quite believe Manville’s Marquise would trifle with him, even for sport.
If van der Westhuysen ends up with a career like Manville has had and is having, she should be well pleased. One of the benefits of getting older is the pleasure of seeing a spellbinding actress, who is both instinctive and intelligent, finally get all the flowers.
Long a favourite of Mike Leigh and a mainstay of the Royal Court in the 80s, Manville operated for years just under the radar: then around 2013 the worlds of theatre, TV and film suddenly woke up to her. As well as Mum, Mrs Harris and the Phantom Thread on screen she’s had a purple decade on stage, from Ibsen’s Ghosts to her recent, rending Jocasta in Robert Icke’s Oedipus.
Her Marquise here is worth the price of admission alone: imperiously coquettish, icily self-assured, always supremely in the moment. Your ticket also gets you starry turns from Turner and Barbaro, in a production that’s sumptuous even if it sometimes succumbs to bloat – a current issue at the National. That’s a better bargain than the one the Marquise and Valmont make.
National Theatre, to June 6; nationaltheatre.org.uk
