Set & Lighting Designed & Executed by John MacKenzie & Michele Boll
Costume Design by Kimmerie H.O. Jones
Master Seamstress Elise Westmeyer
Wigs by Judy Disbrow
Properties by Kristin Hughes
Sound/Music Design by Alex French
Fight Choreography by Chris Cardoni
Producers Michelle Aguillon & Michael Tonner
Stage Manager Joe Domina

La Marquise de Merteuil......Melissa Sine
Vicomte de Valmont............Jason Beals
Madame de Tourval..............Sara Jones
Cecile de Volanges.............Ann Freund
Madame de Volanges..........Leslie Wagner
Chevalier de Danceny..........Andy O'Kane
Azolan.......................Chris Wagner
Emilie......................Kristin Shoop
Madame de Rosemonde........Sandi McDonald
Major Domo...................Steve Folven

Friday/Saturday, 13/14 January, '06
In these past two evenings I have confirmed my suspicions that the bigger and more expensive theater productions get here in Boston, the less they are worth the prices of admission nor the attention of those paying them. The price for one of the 52 seats in Hovey Players' Abbott Memorial cubbyhole is $15, while the orchestra seat I sat in at the Huntington's B U Theatre normally costs $65 (only the last row of their balcony goes for $15). I can think of nothing the people paying an extra fifty bucks got for their money --- save the illusion of excellence.

Well, there Is more space, of course. Faced with the problem of putting an intimate play on a big barn of a stage, James Noone provided a single room, and wrapped around and over it a fantasy-flight of staircases to nowhere. Then, given this dove-grey staircase, Director Daniel Goldstein was forced to use it, giving characters long, moody exits or entrances, and even for one scene, staircase-sex. In general, the stairs and the space served to separate the Huntington actors who, when not declaiming their arias thoughtfully and directly to the audience, threw an occasional bon mot over a shoulder at the person supposedly being spoken with.

One would think that the little Hovey stage would feel a want of space, but this is never the case there. Those playing the deviously lascivious schemers (Melissa Sine & Jason Beals) converse like two old lovers sharing luscious secrets, their faces so close that to be closer they must kiss. And there a chaise, repositioned and with a sheet, becomes a bed --- Voila! When the stage-space and the audience-space are almost equal, every detail has value. The avoidance of an offered kiss, seen so close even from the back row, can cause more pain that a slapped cheek --- and, at Hovey it does. Director Kristin Hughes sees to that.

Then there are costumes. Admittedly, the huge Huntington budget paid for yards and yards of gowns farthingaled to a fair-thee-well. (A courtesan, undressing for work, at one point dropped what seemed two fire-buckets hung under her skirts from each hip!) Gowns were less clothing than sculpture, one high-necked to the very chin but backless behind, one festooned with big brass buttons on a slut-red vinyl bodice --- while the male lead appeared first in boots and a long pin-striped coat that made him look like a Mississippi river-boat gambler. And then at one point an eager ex-virgin tested the tension of a new bed by jumping delightedly upon it --- totally in the nude.

The Hovey costumes, designed by Kimmerie Jones and built by Elise Westmeyer, mirror the ambivalent mores of the period --- 1782. Square scoop-necks barely contain passionate bosoms while floor-length falls of fabric, padded a bit on each hip, conceal the fact that, in the France of 1782, bloomers had not yet been invented. The gentlemen, though, show stockinged calves below toreador-trousers revealed under gold-brocade coats and wigs as elaborate as women's. They are the roosters gaudily promenading before their fluttering flock.

Christopher Hampton's play, dramatizing Cholderlos de Laclos' epistolary novel, begins and ends with three elegant women playing at cards, and at several points characters expand the metaphor of games to those of sex, seduction, cuckoldry, passion, and --- as a last resort --- love. The widowed Madame Merteuil and the reprobate Valmont, who have eschewed mere sex to fan a friendship in which they reveal to one another their most scandalous achievements and plans, employ one another to aid in their schemes and to deceive the objects of their lusts. Valmont considers that a Madame de Tourvel, chaste even in the absence of her husband and determined to stay that way, presents a landmark challenge to a determined and honey-mouthed libertine. La Merteuil, miffed at a former lover, asks Valmont to deflower the man's empty-headed fiancee as a revenge on him. There is a penniless young man hopelessly infatuated with this virgin --- but the plotting pair are determined that the course of true love never will run smooth.

In a sense, the play is Moliere with people. Smoldering under the central pair's plots is an unavoidable urge to renew their lust for one another that makes their posturing, their moves and counter-moves, merely means to make themselves more admirable in each other's eyes. However, as plots progress, there are two levels, two tones and subtones and overtones working, at least out in Waltham. At one point Valmont and Tourvel break from their surface-jousting over morality and virtue and lust to see love --- actual love! --- of each other in one another. This is, to Merteuil, the ultimate sin, and she demands he choose which sort of "love" he prefers: her, familiar, kind or this other, new one.

It's at that point in the play that the glibly sacharine lies of conquest and cruelty turn to lies not professing but denying love, wounding hearer and speaker both. At Hovey, the sudden slip of Valmont from posturing to passion is obvious in Jason Beals' and Sara Jones' every word and breath and gesture, and the fear and contempt in Melissa Sine's Merteuil when she sees she has lost the game by winning it is equally apparent. On the bigger stage, such subtleties were nowhere in evidence.

But then, such reversals of type come in the second half of the play, and this evening whole rows of people paying 65 dollars apiece to see the show decamped, after discussing their discontents, in the act-break. Apparently some critic or other had given them permission to do so, so they left.

What drew them to the huntington in the first place, though? Could it be the presence in the cast of a graduate of t-v's "Dark Shadows" and "The Pretenders" and film-work playing opposite Pam Grier and Snoop Dogg? I'd like to say Michael T. Weiss brings from these worlds a depth and intelligence and understanding badly needed on todays stages, but I can't. Still, who knows? I didn't see him at the Huntington in "Burn This" --- and perhaps he is merely a victim of Daniel Goldstein's ham-handed blocking, over-obvious line-readings, and, in general, direction that displays a contempt for the intelligence of the Boston audience.

If you like good, ironic dialogue, lusty themes, and wicked asides, I'd advise you to call 1(781)893-9171 and beg the Hovey Players to extend the run of their production. Rather than losing audiences that have already paid, Hovey is even now fighting off bribes for standing-room in their two remaining week-ends of performance. Maybe, were you to offer them the fifty-bucks-per-seat more that the Huntington charges for the same play, they might manage to find one of their 52 seats empty on a night you're free.

It's worth a try, isn't it?

Love,
===Anon.
( a k a larry stark )

Scenic Design by James Noone
Lighting Design by Mark Stanley
Costume Design by Erin Chainani
Sound Design by Benjamin Emerson Original Music by Loren Toolajian
Casting Director Alaine Alldaffer
Production Stage Manager Stephen M. Kaus
Stage Manager Eileen Ryan Kelly

La Marquise de Merteuil.....Tasha Lawrence
Madame de Volanges..............Ann Talman
Cecile de Volanges...........Louisa Krause
Major Domo.....................James Bodge
Vicomte de Valmont........Michael T. Weiss
Azolan.........................Seth Fisher
Madame de Rosemonde............Alice Duffy
La Presidente de Tourval......Yvonne Woods
Emilie.......................Jennie Israel
Chevalier de Danceny............Jeff Barry
Footman........................Jacob Green
Maid.........................Juliet Totten

"LES LIAISIONS DANGEREUSES"

by Christopher Hampton, adapted from the novel by Choderlos de Laclos
directed by Daniel Goldstein

La Marquise de Merteuil ... Tasha Lawrence
Mme. de Volanges ... Ann Talman
Cécile Volanges ... Louisa Krause
Major-domo ... James Bodge
Le Vicomte de Valmont ... Michael T. Weiss
Azolan ... Seth Fisher
Mme. de Rosemonde ... Alice Duffy
La Présidente de Tourvel ... Yvonne Woods
Émilie ... Jennie Israel
Le Chevalier Danceny ... Jeff Barry
Footman ... Jacob Green
Maid ... Juliet Totten

Christopher Hampton's dramatization of Choderlos de Laclos' LES LIAISION DANGEREUSES was the only Broadway production where I departed at intermission (I refer to the acclaimed British import of the late 1980s); at the time, I thought Mr. Hampton's play was a travesty of de Laclos' novel about two French libertines of the eighteenth century, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, who alter the course of two young lovers and destroy a virtuous wife partly out of revenge, partly out of pleasure, and who later turn on each other when Love enters their cat-and-mouse game. I am not so much of a purist that I cannot appreciate tinkering where tinkering is due --- I once saw the late Charles Ludlum stand Flaubert's SALAMBO on its head and have mad, campy fun with it --- but de Laclos' novel, told entirely in letters and diaries, chills with its darkly amusing probes into the human heart and the various masks worn over it; Mr. Hampton turned the novel into a Regency romp, peppered with elementary innuendos, with the villains brought center stage to be chuckled over while the young lovers are reduced to ninnies and the wife, a whining pill. Most fatal of all, Mr. Hampton either failed to set up or chose to ignore the novel's hypocritical era when a girl's virginity and a woman's honor were prized possessions, on one hand, and where one could bed-hop so long as one didn't get caught, on the other; stripped of its context, there is little horror in the villains debauching their victims for isn't sex both hot and fun, and the more the merrier, oui? I never saw the movie, either, with a screenplay by Mr. Hampton based upon his play; should a musical arise, chances are Mr. Hampton will supply the libretto and move even further from de Laclos' elegance and wisdom.

I sat through all of the Huntington Theatre's production, this time around, though other members of the audience did not --- the good news is that Mr. Hampton's LIASONS works as a cold mind-game, all on its own; the bad news is that the production is terrible, with some mind-boggling miscasting and misdirection that become all the more glaring when played out on Boston University's epic stage. Since seduction is the theme, there should be a sense of pulsating flesh beneath the courtly garb but director Daniel Goldstein offers chunks of frozen meat, instead, and none of it thaws in time for proper consumption. Within seconds --- seconds! --- I could tell that Tasha Lawrence was all wrong as the Marquise, who must be the world's smiling confidante on the surface but a gliding shark underneath; Ms. Lawrence brings the stoniest face, the flattest voice and the most brazen contempt to the role --- all she lacks is a "BITCH" sign about her neck. Michael T. Weiss is clearly meant to become the Huntington's stud with his Pale in BURN THIS, several seasons ago, and now his Valmont --- considering the character has four women dancing around his penis, you would expect a figure whose very spit would seem like ejaculation, but Mr. Weiss, a handsome-enough lug, does little more than kick the plot forward like a soccer ball and declaim in a voice composed of gravel and grease; when paired against Ms. Lawrence's nattering, the eardrums suffer. As the idiotic Cécile, Louisa Krause gets to ruffle the audience with a willy-nilly burst of nudity and the ASP's Jennie Israel makes her Huntington debut by descending the stairs as a leather-dominatrix --- should Ms. Israel grow any more ample, Mr. Weiss could play checkers on her back, let alone write a letter on it. Two local actors have their moments: Alice Duffy as Valmont's dignified aunt and James Bodge as a mute Major-domo; both of them look and react in period and gaze upon the action with puzzled tenderness --- they could also be gazing upon the two hours of misguided traffic in which they have found themselves.