In terms of casting, Adam Cooper's Liaisons Dangereuses is all but flawless. Having been the hypnotically predatory star of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, Cooper himself was born to play Valmont - the most charismatic libertine in literature.
And Sarah Wildor is ideal as Madame de Tourvel, Valmont's innocent prey.
Less certain though are Cooper's credentials for choreographing the story, for this two-act version of Laclos's novel is by far the biggest challenge of his creative career.
Smartly, however, he admits to his inexperience and what makes this production work as well as it does, is his speed in exploiting all his available resources. As well as having the supremely inventive Lez Brotherston as co-director and designer, Cooper has all the knowledge he has gleaned from his long dancing career, and he isn't afraid to work his influences hard.
The action all takes place in huge mirrored salon, a set adroitly designed by Brotherston to evoke the artifice and claustrophobia of 18th-century France.
As Valmont competes with the Marquise de Merteuil in her games of conquest and corruption, images are constantly thrown back of them: Cooper a velvet devil, his caressing seductiveness belied by the cool rake of his gaze, Sarah Barron's Merteuil a manipulative raptor in her pursuit of power. Accompanied by the atmospheric distortions of Philip Feeney's faux 18th-century score, a genuine chill of evil hovers around the stage.
When Wildor first enters as Tourvel she seems to move in a finer light but as she falls for Valmont, Cooper exploits to the full Wildor's peculiar capacity to evoke depths and complications. You can sense the tug and dissolving of desire and the central pas de deux between her and Valmont is the finest moment in the production .
Disappointingly though, Cooper's vocabulary elsewhere tends to strain under the burden of his narrative. At one extreme he relies on too much artful posing and sexually coded gesture, at the other hand he flips too quickly into melodrama. When Valmont grieves over the dead Tourvel it's impossible to equate his maddened hand wringing with his usual sardonic veneer.
But Cooper has hopes for the future of this show and given its strengths of structure and design he ought to be able to work its detail. Certainly the fans ought to demand it.
It's too good to see Cooper and Wildor together on stage again to let them go any time soon.
· Until August 14. Box office: 0870 737 7737
