Liaisons Dangereuses Closes After Month, 10 Jan

The new West End revival of Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses will close on 10 January 2004, less than a month after its opening night and more than two months earlier than scheduled. The production opened at the Playhouse Theatre on 12 December 2003 and had been booking until 27 March 2004 (See News, 31 Oct 2003).

Based on Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 novel about the sexually fuelled power struggles of the French aristocracy, Hampton's play premiered at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1985 in a production, starring Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan, that 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 Hollywood film Dangerous Liaisons, with John Malkovich and Glenn Close playing the cruelly manipulative Marquise de Merteuil and le Vicomte de Valmont and Michelle Pfeiffer as Valmont's virtuous conquest Madame de Tourvel.

In the new production – directed by Tim Fywell, who is best known for his recent screen work with I Capture the Castle and Cambridge Spies - Jared Harris, Polly Walker and Emilia Fox take the leads.

No further productions have yet been announced for the Playhouse.

- by Terri Paddock

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