Whether or not there's any need for another revival of Christopher Hampton's catty, rococo concoction of insidious scheming and vertical hair, Robert Delamare's well-dressed production proves there are any number of ways to land on a chaise longue.
There's the virile, masculine flounce, as demonstrated by Henry Ian Cusick's Vicomte de Valmont, expertly preceded by a contemptuous flick of the coat-tails for the full, knee-weakening effect. Women may prefer the stately descent, as perfected by Francesca Ryan's Marquise de Merteuil, as if lowering herself into a huge meringue. More dangerous is the hysterical, airborne approach favoured by Kananu Kirimi's saintly, highly strung Tourvel, who cracks her head so lustily on the couch's frame, one hopes there's a hard hat built into her hairpiece.
Les Liaisons is more about striking an attitude than making a point, and here the production scores highly, with Simon Higlett's glittering black walls offsetting a choice smattering of period pieces (though the mirrored doors open to reveal a fine reflection of the stage manager's prompt console). Delamare works hard to produce performances as measured and affected as Hampton's dialogue demands. Cusick's moody Valmont dominates, slithering around like a devastatingly well-tailored lizard, leaving a cloud of pomade and a slick of oil behind him. He is well matched by the inscrutable insouciance of Ryan as his partner in slime, her world-weary delivery becoming progressively slower, her voice deeper, until one wonders if she is speaking or simply sighing heavily. These characters' slender necks will be the first for the chop when the revolution comes - a point made implicitly by Hampton's text and explicitly by Delamare's cumbersome closing image of prison bars and swishing blades. It's this smirking overlay of irony that turns Hampton's account of Laclos's tale into a true period piece - not of the 1780s, when the novel was written, but the 1980s, when Les Liaisons became a soaraway success. Back then these sexually free-wheeling, periwigged proto-yuppies touched a nerve. Now they simply get on them.
Until Saturday. Box office: 0151-709 4776.
