TWO NOVEL PLAYS:

Two classic novels, both adapted many, many times to film, are now stage plays in Boston. Both opened Wednesday night.

"Les Liasions Dangereuses" is an 18th century French novel by Choderlos de Laclos that has been filmed 11 times since French director Roger Vadim embraced it first in 1959.

Playwright Christopher Hampton wrote the 1987 stage version and adapted that into the screenplay for the 1988 film. That stage version starring Michael T. Weiss is at the Huntington Theatre.

It was also opening night for the Broadway musical version of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women" starring Maureen McGovern at the Opera House.

Since 1917, there have been 16 screen versions of Alcott's 1869 autobiographical novel. This Broadway musical version has come home to the Bay State since the creative team behind it, like Alcott, all come from here.

Composer Jason Howland even lived on Alcott Street in Concord.

"Bringing it to Boston is a big deal," said Worcester-born producer Dani Davis, who brought her father Jeff Berthiaume to the cast party at Mantra, the popular Ladder District restaurant.

"My entire extended family is here," she said. "They wouldn't come to Broadway to see it. But now it's in Boston, so I've made it!"

Guests at the cast party at Mantra included Jan Turnquist, executive director of Orchard House, the Alcott museum that was the family's residence and the real site of the novel's events.

McGovern and stage daughters Kate Fisher, Gwen Hollander, Renee Brna and Autumn Hurlbert visited Orchard House last Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Huntington's "Les Liasions Dangereuses" party was a pre-performance supper at the Colonnade Hotel for 180 trustees, overseers and major donors.

Costume designer Erin Chainani attended with mother-in-law Sheila Chainani and spoke briefly to the dinner guests rushing to eat in time to get to the theater.

Guests included Huntington managing director Michael Maso, board chairman J. David Wimberly, trustees Carol Deane Susan Kaplan and Cokie Perry and overseer Caroline Collings and her daughter-in-law, also named Caroline Collings.