For decades, the sharp-tongued Marquess de Merteuil and rakish Viscount de Valmont have delighted in emotional manipulation and psychological warfare, with seemingly no regard for those who get swept up in their games.
However, their recent simple wager that the Viscount can seduce an innocent young woman goes tragically wrong when he breaks the rules and the Marquess changes the game entirely.
With real feelings emerging out of their struggle for power, who shall have the final victory?
Forget the film versions (Dangerous Liaisons, Valmont, Cruel Intentions), forget Christopher Hampton's play, this version by Sydney playwright Deborah Mulhall goes back to Choderlos de Laclos's original novel and is full of surprises.
The company will welcome back Tasha O'Brien, making her New Theatre directorial debut having last worked here as an actor, giving a memorable 'Vladimir Putin' in A Very Expensive Poison. Others on the creative team include Dramaturg/Consultant Jess Zlotnick, Intimacy Coordinator Shondelle Pratt and Fight Choreographer Diego Ratemales, plus making their New Theatre debuts, Costume Designer Lily Moody and Make-up Artist Ruby Dollin.
The cast includes first-time New Theatre actors Beth Champion, Melissa Jones, Megan Kennedy, Ella Morris, Harrison Collis Oates and Bronte Price, joined by returning actors Ben Dewstow (Animal Farm), Suzann James (Broadway Bound, Banging Denmark) and Chad Traupmann (Banging Denmark, Shakespeare in Love).
Says Tasha: "What excites me about directing this play was the challenge of stretching a seemingly straightforward period piece in ways that would surprise the audience. Working at the New within limited budgets forces you to make inventive creative choices and think outside the box. This is why we've opted for a timeless space to pay homage to both the context it was meant for and the world we live in today.
"It's been great having Deborah in the room while we've been rehearsing, allowing us creative freedom to make changes to the script and highlight the themes we wanted to touch on. I hope people dig deeper into the meaning of the play. Even if they walk in assuming this will be a period drama all about sex, they leave realising it's a great feminist text that questions society's norms and values, challenges gender stereotypes, and shows that power can come in many different forms."
Says Deborah: "For me, an adaptation is most successful when it is true to the original author's intent. We must serve the writer. Thirty years ago, I was approached by a theatre company to try my hand at 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses', a period novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. It is a novel completely composed of letters, so the challenge was to turn those letters into dialogue. With this novel, I was very aware that Hollywood had changed the ending, in keeping with its “bad girls must be punished” rhetoric. But this was not the ending of de Laclos' novel."
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