Eighteenth-century writer Choderlos de Laclos, whose novel "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" chronicled the rampant amorality of the French aristocracy just before its cataclysmic demise in the revolution of 1789, once expressed the hope that his incendiary work would be talked about long after his death.
He's gotten his wish.
Hollywood employed Glenn Close, Michelle Pfeiffer and John Malkovich to turn "Dangerous Liaisons" into a riveting film in 1988. It has become an opera, and in 1985 British playwright Christopher Hampton adapted it for the stage at the behest of London's Royal Shakespeare Company.
Hampton's handiwork is on display at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre, where Rep Stage, Columbia's premier theatrical ensemble, has joined with the Source Theatre of Washington to present "Dangerous Liaisons" through Oct. 18.
The production is directed by Joe Banno, Source Theatre's artistic director, whose talents were honored with a Helen Hayes Award in May.
From this production, it's not hard to see why Banno's work would cause his peers to take notice. He has taken a rather talky play and brought it to life with an energy that positively drips with the twin venoms of avarice and sexual excess.
No ruffled gowns, powdered wigs or waistcoats for this crew of misfit libertines. Banno has taken Laclos' tale of former lovers who plot the humiliation of others for their own personal amusement and dressed it up in a setting that's tres 1990s.
The Vicomte de Valmont (Rick Foucheux), who ruins the lurid plan by falling in love with the young newlywed he's been assigned to bed, reeks of Armani, while his toxic Marquise
(Valerie Costantini), clad in an oh-so-stylish black dress with eyeglasses to match, comes off looking like an oversexed incarnation of Stephen Sondheim's "Ladies Who Lunch."
Much of their plotting is done amid the dark gray tones of a salon that resembles a chic Nordstrom's tea room. The theater's nifty revolving stage reveals other minimalist backgrounds that are very much of our own time.
The result is a setting Laclos wouldn't recognize, but one that is all too familiar to us. And that's precisely the director's point. Lust -- whether for power, for intrigue or for its own sake -- is a perennial of human nature irrespective of time and place. If allowed to run rampant, unchecked by conscience, it can twist and ruin people of any historical era.
