“Les Liaisons Dangereuses” at Schoolhouse Theater

Sexual antiheroes of 1782

“Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is playing at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls through Sept. 21. (Doug Abdelnour photos)

By DAVID POGUE

Apologies in advance: I’ve never loved “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” 

It’s the tale of two cruel, manipulative ex-lovers who see sex as a game and other people as their pawns. I get that antiheroes can be fun. But these days, it’s not easy to root for a middle-aged dude getting rapey with a 15-year-old girl.

The 1985 play, by Christopher Hampton based on a 1782 novel, has run on Broadway twice and in London twice. Then there was the Oscar-winning 1988 movie adaptation, which starred Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves, and even a modernized teen version called “Cruel Intentions” (1999).

Still, if any production can give this play a fighting chance, it’s the one playing at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls through Sept. 21. This may be a local theater company performing in a 99-seat auditorium, but don’t be fooled — this is not community theater. The designers’ bios are full of Broadway credits, and the cast is composed of paid, professional actors.

Much of your enjoyment will hinge on understanding the opening scene. Hampton has done some amazing writing in his day, including the movies “Atonement” (2007) and “The Father” (2020), but this expository scene is not, ahem, his finest work. 

The two wealthy and heartless masters of seduction are the Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil (Elizabeth S. Rodgers) and the Vicomte de Valmont (Patrick Zeller). “Love is something you use, not something you fall into like a quicksand,” Merteuil says.

In the course of a minute, they will rattle off the names of no fewer than seven key characters you’re supposed to track, all with unfamiliar French names, many of whom never actually appear in the play. 

Here, as far as I can figure out, is the setup they’re describing: 

Merteuil’s boyfriend, the Comte de Gercourt, has run off with Valmont’s mistress (unnamed). Gercourt now wants to marry a blonde, virginal, 15-year-old convent student, Cécile de Volanges. Merteuil, bitter at having been dumped, wants Valmont to deflower Cécile while Gercourt is out of town, thus humiliating Gercourt. (“Love and revenge,” she tells him. “Two of your favorites!”) But Valmont considers the challenge “too easy,” and wants instead to seduce a beautiful 22-year-old — and straitlaced — newlywed, Madame de Tourvel, who’s staying with his aunt, Madame de Rosemonde. If he succeeds, Merteuil will have sex with him. 

As one guy put it at intermission, “I need an org chart for this show.”

If you do manage to figure out who’s trying to seduce whom and why — and if you can rationalize these French characters speaking with flawless British accents — you’re in for an entertaining and sometimes disturbing ride. 

Valmont sees playboyhood as his profession, and his sexual humiliations of others as essential to his reputation. So things get juicy indeed when, in an O. Henry moment, his attempts to win over Madame de Tourvel backfire. It’s not that she doesn’t fall for him — she does — but that he inadvertently falls for her. So much for women as disposable conquests.

The cast is outstanding. Rodgers, as the scheming and unrepentant Merteuil, is a phenom. She makes the most of a theater where the audience is 10 feet away; her smallest smiles, her subtlest eyebrow raises feel like the grace notes of an actor who’s been polishing this role for a year.

Zeller, as Valmont, is also terrific — and believable. In the movie, there’s a little voice in the back of your head going, “John Malkovich? He’s the hunk no woman can resist?!” 

But Zeller’s Valmont wears decades’ worth of conquests like a bear-fur cape. Every move telegraphs the smug, world-weary confidence of an unemployed rich boy, the way he drapes himself on furniture, the way he plays off women’s insecurities, the way he chooses his women not by how much he desires them, but by how big a score they’d be. Hilariously, his hair is cowlicky — he’s so self-assured that he doesn’t even bother running a hand through it. Or maybe he just assumes that all women love bad boys.

Other standouts include Kate Day Magocsi who nails the role of Cécile, the sitting-duck virgin. Indiana Robinson-Dawes sparkles as the one woman whose joyful liaisons with Valmont aren’t the least bit dangereuses. And Elizah Knight, as Tourvel, makes the most of an underdeveloped part, capped by a startlingly realistic anxiety/guilt meltdown.

Schoolhouse artistic director Owen Thompson does a superb job of concealing what must have been a massive amount of effort, making a talky, ambitious play feel propulsive and organic. The set conjures up various sitting rooms and bedrooms by shifting a few pieces of furniture and adjusting the positions of two huge sliding panels. 

In the end, Valmont pays dearly for having made the mistake of developing actual feelings for a woman; dramatically speaking, his fate earns him a teaspoon of redemption and empathy. Madame Merteuil, on the other hand, has no arc. She starts toxic and ends toxic — and pays dearly in her own way. 

“Les Liaisons Dangereuses” still isn’t my favorite play. But as though we needed reminding, the polished Schoolhouse production reminds us that soulless people who abuse their power have always walked among us.

The Schoolhouse Theater is located at 3 Owens Road, North Salem. 

For tickets and more information, visit  www.theschoolhousetheater.org.