Dangerous liaisons broadway how long is the show

DANGEROUS LIAISONS BROADWAY HOW LONG IS THE SHOW HOW TO

No wonder Christopher HamptonвЂ™s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, with its baroque dialogue bordering on camp, has proved so popular with upmarket stars. Les Liaisons Dangereuses is salacious fun - the plot and characters feel compellingly alive and contemporary, even zeitgeisty - though the length of the play and memories of the classic film may have viewers wondering why we should be returning to this story at the theater.From Les Liaisons Dangereuses, at the Booth Theatre.Д¬lassically trained actors are naturally drawn to roles that show off their verbal fluency, but few contemporary plays give them the chance. I donвЂ™t mind a long play, but itвЂ™s problematic here because we already know how things end up. Act I was upwards of an hour-and-a-half (IвЂ™d assumed about midway through that they were going to perform the whole show with no intermission), but a pause and Act II had the evening clocking in at almost three hours. While the play doesnвЂ™t feel like itвЂ™s crammed with more incident or detail than the movie, itвЂ™s much longer. Shannon RobertвЂ™s set design appropriately enough has the intimacy of a bed chamber and the in-the-round set-up of a boxing ring, and Mary ParkerвЂ™s candlelike lighting repeats those ideas (though some charactersвЂ™ faces were occasionally in darkness when I wanted to see reactions). The slightly different ending of the play is more intriguingly ambiguous, if less dramatic, than the ending of the movie. We enjoy watching the manipulators succeed and then we enjoy watching their plans start to crumble. Hester as Valmont captures the cold-blooded, slithery, smirky nature of the character (he does this so thoroughly that I never quite believed that he had fallen for the virtuous Madame de Tourvel).

DANGEROUS LIAISONS BROADWAY HOW LONG IS THE SHOW HOW TO

Human society is hypocritical, cruel and blisteringly stupid, so why shouldnвЂ™t one benefit from learning how to manipulate it? ItвЂ™s a believable search for knowledge, existential resentment and rebellion against womenвЂ™s unfair position in society. The gratification and thrill of wielding power, the nihilism, the bruised ego are all troublingly recognizable here. KrausenвЂ™s Marquise is all of those things, but sheвЂ™s a more understandable and simpatica cynic for the audience. I remember the Marquise as played by Glenn Close in the film is immoral and conniving, almost sociopathic. Still, Krausen manages to put an interestingly wicked yet sympathetic spin on the character. I remembered entire scenes, intonations, gestures. As the play unfolded, I remembered not just Close and MalkovichвЂ™s interpretations of their roles, but I recalled that Keanu Reeves, Uma Thurman and Swoozie Kurtz were all in the film, as well, something I hadnвЂ™t thought about in years. ItвЂ™s been 25 years since the film was released, and it may be about that long since IвЂ™ve seen it, but putting it aside was actually surprisingly harder than I would have imagined. Because the film production was pretty memorable, itвЂ™s an uphill battle for a theater to produce the play if there ever was one. The Marquise de Merteuil (Park Krausen) and the Vicomte de Valmont (Paul Hester) are former lovers who scheme to bring about the downfall of others through their immoral sexual machinations.

AtlantaвЂ™s ActorвЂ™s Express is taking that chance, opening its 2014вЂ“15 season with a production of the play Les Liaisons Dangereuses(through October 5). There was a 2008 Broadway revival with Laura Linney and Ben Daniels in the leads, and a successful production in Sydney, that indicated artists and audiences could be ready to approach a live production of the show with a fresh pair of eyes. But theaters have recently begun to dust off the old script to see if they can mount new productions. Perhaps because the lead roles in the film were so memorably enacted by Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer, the play itself hasnвЂ™t been produced much in the intervening years. The play was a huge success for the Royal Shakespeare Company - it had subsequent productions on the West End and on Broadway in 1987 - and Hampton ended up writing the screenplay for the 1988 film adaptation. (Photo by BreeAnne Clowdus)Д«efore Dangerous Liasons was a film, it was a novel, of course, but it was also a hit play: British playwright Christopher Hampton based his 1985 play on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos 1782 novel about two rivals at the pinnacle of prerevolutionary Parisian society who delight in using sex as a weapon to manipulate and humiliate others. Park Krausen gets seductive with Paul Hester.

Dangerous liaisons broadway how long is the show