Bored French aristocrats from the 18th century who cynically manipulate each other and set out to seduce and abandon vulnerable sexual targets for their own depraved amusement are a poisonous breed whose comeuppance is sweet in the Louisville Repertory Company's production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Michael J. Drury's polished direction of Christopher Hampton's play, based on the 1782 epistolary novel by Choderlos de Laclos elicits, spellbinding performances from Raquel Robbins Cecil and Darren McGee as La Marquise de Merteuil and Le Vicomte de Valmont, the perverse ex-lovers who cold-bloodedly plot together to extract revenge on unknowing others through elaborate sex games. Their intrigues involve the libertine Valmont's unremitting assault on the affections of the virtuous La Presidente de Tourvel (Beth Northup) and his rape of the virginal Cecile Volanges (Michelle Rynbrandt).
Northup and Rynbrandt are excellent as is Carol Dines as Mme de Volanges, Cecile's easily compromised mother. Loathsome and dissolute as they are, Valmont and Merteuil are as fascinating to watch as cobras moving to flute music. Drury's fluid direction underlines the eroticism in their cat-and- mouse maneuvers.
Valmont's bed scenes with Cecile and the courtesan Emilie (spiritedly played by Kristy Calman) graphically convey his unbridled lust. Merteuil's diatribe about the status of women in that era -- and how she got to be the way she is -- is scathingly delivered by the riveting Raquel Cecil with her eyes narrowed and full of contempt for the male sex she decided she was "born to dominate." "Cruelty," she tells Valmont, is her favorite word, "not betrayal." But she nevertheless practices both, leading to a shocking, unforeseen outcome for her, Valmont, and Tourvel.
