Christopher Hampton's witty comedy of sexual depravity slips comfortably into middle age in this slightly clunky touring production. The dialogue is still delicious, like shards of the finest cut glass, but here direction, design and some performances mean you can see all the seams in a play that now comes across less like an 18th century Closer and more like a BBC costume drama. Sophie Ward's Madame de Tourvel is too much of a simpering late 19th century heroine and needs far more grave dignity to make her fall from grace seem really tragic.
But there is dangerous fun to be had, not least from Siobhan Redmond's Marquise de Merteuil, whose sexual sport is the corruption of the innocent but whose raison d' etre is the revenge and humiliation of those who have crossed her.
Together with her former lover, the rakish Vicomte de Valmont, she conspires to have the 15-year-old daughter of her friend deflowered and corrupted. An extension of their nasty little games of sex and power is his desire to seduce Madame de Tourvel, a woman renowned for her happy marriage and high morals. What neither reckons on in their well-laid plans is the arrival of love.
Redmond is fantastic; her eyes glint and she glides across the stage like an erotically malevolent cobra. This is a woman who preaches excess but is all self-control. Her power and survival in the sexual world of men has been bought at a terrible price, her own humanity. Victory is not just hollow but also temporary: as the play ends, 1789 and revolution loom.
Redmond and Clive Wood's Valmont play well off each other and there is a real sexual tension about their encounters. Wood is a very fine actor, and he charts both his relish for the game and his confusion as it spirals out of his control. But he's far too cuddly to persuade as the bed-hopping rake whom no woman can resist. You'd be more likely to offer this Valmont a cup of cocoa than your virginity.
At Theatre Royal, Bath (01225 448844) until Saturday. Tours to Alexander Theatre, Birmingham (0870-607 7535), March 7-11, then Norwich, Milton Keynes, Nottingham and throughout Britain until June.
