"Ms. McTeer and Mr. Schreiber come across as magnificent bulls who have strayed into a Limoges china shop...Directed by Josie Rourke, this latest 'Liaisons' falls into the trap of such broadness early and lies there, gesticulating madly, for more than two and a half hours. Occasionally something like real feeling raises its startled head — especially in the second act, when Valmont falls in love despite himself. But such twinges of emotion are more disruptive than illuminating."
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"Ghostly and sensuous revival of Christopher Hampton’s hit play (based on the 1782 epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos)...Schreiber’s impassive libertine pairs nicely with McTeer’s vengeful, wicked widow. Director Josie Rourke opts for a languid pace as these two dance a minuet of wasted love and cruelty, a game in which death is the prize and the winner feels cheated."
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""A gorgeous but tiresome revival...Most of the laughs in the first half-hour were dead on arrival. That’s exactly backward; 'Liaisons' works better as a rollicking comedy that then pulls you up short, slowly implicating you in its cruelty. It doesn’t help that Rourke directs the ensemble to make the minimal set changes between scenes while prancing and singing as if at Fragonard garden party. It’s a triumph of the visual over the dramatic, or would be but for the actors fighting back."
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"Josie Rourke, the director, and Janet McTeer and Liev Schreiber, the stars, seem not to realize that for most of its length, 'Liaisons' is a high comedy about two lost souls who end up in hell. The acting is consistently unsubtle and unfunny—Ms. McTeer and Mr. Schreiber both mistake archness for wit—and the direction and design are even more heavy-handed."
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"I don’t think the feminist angle is new, and certainly not new to Hampton’s terrific script, now three decades old. So Rourke’s production seems so much gilding of the lily, as it were, making the points with as heavy a hand as possible. It’s skillfully performed, sometimes visually arresting but mostly just plain crude...It’s an oddly off-putting mix of period melodrama and contemporary finger-wagging that left me unmoved and deflated."
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"Delivers all the thrill of watching paint dry...For this play to work there must be high stakes and hot chemistry between the Vicomte de Valmont (Schreiber) and Marquise de Merteuil (McTeer)...The elephant in the theater is that Schreiber is miscast...McTeer fares better. She is a striking presence on stage. She captures Merteuil’s sly cold-hearted calculation as well as her vulnerability. But eventually she becomes static and one-note. Dangerous liaisons? More like bland ones."
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"Under the direction of its artistic director, Josie Rourke, wit and style count more than passion...When Merteuil realizes that Valmont is no longer playing their game, McTeer’s silent reaction is devastating...Valmont has his own piercing insight...Schreiber gives it his best shot, but the sensitive feelings of a charming libertine don’t register in the same way that his more animal appetites do...But while director Rourke’s casting seems a bit bizarre, her staging is superb."
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"A blazing performance by Janet McTeer...Even if Liev Schreiber is ill-suited for the part of Valmont, Josie Rourke's evocative staging provides a compelling portrait of a dissolute aristocracy on the brink of devouring itself...All this would be just so much juicy bodice-ripping melodrama without Hampton's glittering dialogue and without Rourke's sound psychological investigation of the characters' motives...Visually, Rourke's production is both pared-down and sumptuous."
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