Cooper Plans Further Liaisons Dangereuses???

The first offering from Adam Cooper Productions, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, starts its first UK performances at London’s Sadler’s Wells tonight (Thursday 21 July - See News, 10 Mar 2005). The former Royal Ballet and AMP Swan Lake star choreographs, co-directs and stars, with his wife Sarah Wildor, in this new dance version of Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 novel about the sexually fuelled power struggles of the French aristocracy. If you miss the show’s brief engagement, to 14 August 2005, at Sadler’s Wells, you may get another chance to book tickets before long. It’s tipped for an international tour and, all going to plan, a return to London for a longer season, possibly in the West End, care of Act Productions. Of course, this is not the first dramatisation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Christopher Hampton adapted it as a stage play for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1985. That production, starring Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan, transferred to Broadway and won numerous awards including the Olivier for Best New Play. In 1988, the piece was famously made into the Oscar-winning film Dangerous Liaisons, with John Malkovich and Glenn Close as the scheming Vicomte de Valmont and Marquise de Merteuil and Michelle Pfeiffer as Valmont's virtuous conquest Madame de Tourvel. The 1999 Hollywood film Cruel Intentions relocated the story in modern America. In the new dance version, Cooper and Wildor play Valmont and Madame de Tourvel with Sarah Barron as Marquise de Merteuil. The piece is co-directed by its designer Lez Brotherston.

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