Wig Out

Stripped of its powdered wigs and the layers of silk and satin, Stephen Frears’ film version of Dangerous Liaisons is an exquisite and perversely contemporary tale about people who use people. As the Marquise De Merteuil (the wicked Glenn Close character) says to the equally vicious Vicomte De Valmont (played by John Malkovich), those so inclined must declare nothing short of war should anyone get in the way.

Late Night Theatre chief Ron Megee has vowed to tackle the story for a couple of seasons, and it’s finally up on daintily muled feet as Dangerous Dirty Little Liaisons. Megee has cowritten and codirected the show with Missy Koonce and assembled an ace design team: Jennifer Myers Ecton, whose costumes are dazzling; Andy Chambers, whose wigs and makeup would be a towering achievement on a Broadway stage; and Jon Young, whose clever sets please the eye while baffling laws of space and geometry.

What’s missing is a cohesive point of view.

Late Night’s stash of resources includes several versions of the tale, ranging from Choderlos de Laclos’ original novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, written in 1782, to Cruel Intentions, 1999’s strangely empty update set on New York’s Upper East Side and populated by pretty young things like Ryan Phillippe. Megee and Koonce mostly sample Frears’ movie, though, with entire scenes seemingly transcribed word for word.

Admittedly, they are great words. Lines such as “The shame is like the pain — you only feel it once” are perfectly placed in Christopher Hampton’s Oscar-winning screenplay. But as brilliant as Hampton’s script is, it’s not funny. The story is an ambitious and tragic opera about the fearless pursuit of sexual conquests, regardless of whether people are destroyed in the process. That it unfolds on the brink of the French Revolution — and that all of its fine, strutting peacocks and hens would go on to be tarred and feathered — adds to the palpable tension. What’s not evident here is any rationale for massaging the piece into a Late Night venture.

The film’s a labyrinth from start to finish, a maze of letters filled with lies and double- and triple-crosses. Late Night’s version is just puzzling. La Marquis De Merteuil (Megee) and Valmont (Koonce) were once lovers but have since taken on a host of others. One last coupling will be the reward for Valmont if he completes an obstacle course to deflower the virginal Cecile Volanges (Victoria Metsker) before she is wed to an old fogey of 36.

But that’s too simple. The girl is “a rosebud” waiting to be plucked; as De Merteuil tells Valmont, “If you succeed, it’s commonplace.” So they up the stakes. Valmont rapaciously pursues Madame De Tourvel (David Wayne Reed), a newlywed so spiritual she radiates the aura of a crèche. As if those two babes weren’t enough, Valmont plows various servants of both sexes while his impatient coconspirator takes a lover of her own, Danceny (Damron Russel Armstrong), a tin-eared music teacher who has designs on Cecile.

By the close of the show, several characters die (one of grief) or are publicly humiliated beyond redemption, and the underclass tastes blood. Are we laughing yet?

Because the story is rife with more bellyaches than belly laughs, the cast does its darnedest to find witty ways to spike it for a Late Night audience. Actors purposely mangle the French names, and only one character — Darryl Jones as a put-out manservant — employs a French accent. Perhaps the best running gag belongs to Philip blue owl Hooser, playing the doddering matriarch Madame De Rosemonde, whose scenes get smaller as her days grow shorter — something Hooser points out repeatedly.

But critical plot points, such as Cecile’s transformation from innocent victim to teenage seductress, are mushed to a pulp or ignored altogether. Others are karaoke-ized into musical numbers like Heart’s “Barracuda” and Aerosmith’s “Dream On.” The latter works well enough; its opening verse — Every time I look in the mirror/All the lines in my face getting clearer — perfectly summarizes the fate of Megee’s aging sexpot character. And the indelible guitar riff that kick-starts the Beatles’ “Revolution” makes for a fabulous opening scene. Others, though, such as a couple of Three Dog Night numbers, merely loiter until the audience politely applauds.

For the entertainments it does offer, the show is cursedly overcast — it’s too big for its breeches. As if thirteen people (including Chambers and Gary Campbell, pointlessly double-cast in a role Swoosie Kurtz played solo in the film) didn’t cause enough of a traffic jam on the postage-stamp stage, Act Two introduces marionettes of the four lead characters. What the show doesn’t need at this point is more bodies, wooden or otherwise. And a foam-rubber vagina puppet as big as a serving platter is merely an ill-advised bit supplanting plot development with a dirty joke.

It’s not that Dangerous Dirty Little Liaisons lacks creative ideas. What’s wrong is that it’s ten months’ pregnant with a brood of them. The concept of having the show overlap with the Revolution smacks of something like genius in that it gives the servants — and actors Jessalyn Kincaid, Johnnie Bowls, Justin Shaw and Corrie Van Ausdal — a chance to stick it to the nobles. But the show is too top-heavy. Like a tightly corseted bosom, it’s perky and in your face but has little room to breathe.