Dangerous Liaisons 2010
A MAPPA MUNDI | THEATR MWLDAN CO-PRODUCTION
“Cruelty has a noble ring to it.”
After the critical and popular successes of their most recent touring productions – She Stoops To Conquer (4* review in The Guardian) and The Importance Of Being Earnest – Mappa Mundi, Wales’ most dynamic and popular theatre company, turn their attention to Dangerous Liaisons, a new stage adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 novel of lust, greed, deception, and romance.
A sumptuously mounted celebration of artful wickedness, betrayal, and sexual intrigue among depraved 18th-century French aristocrats, Dangerous Liaisons will offer audiences seductively decadent fun.
Set amongst the glittering chandeliers and marble salons of Paris, Dangerous Liaisons exposes the seedy reality of the rarefied microcosm of the old French aristocracy. This is a society in which the most innocent and noble-minded become the sexual prey of a couple of bored and decadent ex-lovers, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, having both ice-cold revenge and sizzling seduction on their minds. The story unfolds through a series of letters written by the idle rich, as each missive exposes plots and counterplots until sexual corruption and the desire for vengeance propels the story to its tragic ending.
Bringing to it the panache and flair which theatre audiences have long associated with Mappa Mundi’s work, Dangerous Liaisons is sophisticated, witty, yet raucous; it is dark, sensual, and insightful. Most of all, it is very, very sexy. This new production of Dangerous Liaisons is a treat for the senses: Mappa Mundi recreates in its own indomitable style the spectacle and squalor of French society at the moment it was to change forever.
Mappa Mundi’s Dangerous Liaisons will be a new adaptation of the original novel, and follows their previous successful adaptations of Canterbury Tales and Moll Flanders.
“Le Vicomte de Valmont is conspicuously charming and never opens his mouth without first calculating what damage he can do.” Mme. De Volanges
Supported by the Welsh Assembly Government and the Arts Council Of Wales through the Arts Outside Cardiff Scheme.
