British Vogue has featured the stars of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in their February 2026 issue – Lesley Manville, Aidan Turner and Monica Barbaro.
Christopher Hampton’s acclaimed Les Liaisons Dangereuses adaptation, first staged in 1985, is the defining reinvention of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s scandalous 1782 French novel of intrigue and desire.
A new production of the play is now coming to the National Theatre for the first time, playing the National’s Lyttelton theatre from 21 March for a strictly limited season until 6 June 2026.
The drama is directed by Olivier and Tony Award-winner Marianne Elliott (War Horse, Company), who this week was announced as the director of a major new production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George starring Wicked’s Jonathan Bailey and Ariana Grande.
The cover of British Vogue February 2026 issue.
The cast of Les Liaisons Dangereuses – Lesley Manville, Aidan Turner & Monica Barbaro (Photo by Scott Trindle)
Les Liaisons Dangereuses will feature an extraordinary cast, led by two-time Olivier Award-winner Lesley Manville (Oedipus, The Crown, Phantom Thread) as Marquise de Merteuil and Aidan Turner (Rivals, Poldark, The Hobbit) as Vicomte de Valmont, alongside Monica Barbaro (Top Gun: Maverick, A Complete Unknown) as Madame de Tourvel, and Gabrielle Drake (The Inspector Lynley Mysteries) as Madame de Rosemond.
Lesley Manville returns to play Merteuil having appeared as Cécile in the original Royal Shakespeare Company world premiere production in 1985, alongside Lindsay Duncan as Marquise de Merteuil, and Alan Rickman as Valmont.
Reflecting on the first time she saw the play take shape, she said to Vogue, “I remember watching it – this is before we knew what was going to happen to this play – and thinking, ‘Christ, this is good. This is really something else.”
Cécile “was a great part,” she says. “But it wasn’t quite enough to keep me satisfied for long.”
The company also features Sharif Afifi as Azolan, Nandi Bhebhe as Julie, Ali Goldsmith as Major-Domo, Darragh Hand as Chevalier Danceny, Cat Simmons as Madame de Volanges and Hannah van der Westhuysen as Cécile Volanges.
British Vogue February 2026 issue. The cast of Les Liaisons Dangereuses – Lesley Manville, Aidan Turner & Monica Barbaro (Photo by Scott Trindle)
Marking her first National Theatre production in nine years, Marianne Elliott has worked with Christopher Hampton to reimagine Les Liaisons Dangereuses as a glittering and perilous study of love, power and moral decay, and delve deeper into the female experience of the story.
The production also marks a significant stage debut for Monica Barbaro and a high-stakes return for Aidan Turner, who Vogue describes as possessing the “smouldering sensuality” required for a modern Valmont.
When asked why Elliott cast Turner, she says, “Well, he’s really sexy, isn’t he? The thing about sexiness is it’s something you can’t actually play. It’s a secondary symptom to something else that you’re doing. You can never ask an actor to be sexy – that would be the absolute worst.”
Set among the salons of the 18th-century elite, the story follows Merteuil and Valmont as they turn seduction into a blood sport — with catastrophic consequences when their alliance collapses into rivalry.
At 70, Lesley Manville worried that she would be too old to play Merteuil, but Marianne Elliott convinced her that adding an age-gap relationship between Merteuil and Valmont gets to the core of the piece. “Misogyny seems to be on the rise in all sorts of invisible ways,” Elliott told Vogue, “We’re all pretending that it’s an equal society and [that there’s no] ageism or anything like that. But actually, I think it’s more prescriptive than it’s ever been.”
As Manville frames it, “pain is laced with all of that fragility and insecurity of being a woman who’s getting older. I don’t think she doubts herself or her sexuality for one moment, but in a way, the society that we live in – then and now – makes you feel like you’re losing your currency.”
British Vogue February 2026 issue. The cast of Les Liaisons Dangereuses – Lesley Manville, Aidan Turner & Monica Barbaro (Photo by Scott Trindle)
The creative team around Marianne Elliot for Les Liaisons Dangereuses includes Rosanna Vize (set design), Natalie Roar (costume design), Tom Jackson Greaves (choreography), Jasmin Kent Rodgman (composer), James Farncombe (lighting design) and Ian Dickson for Autograph (sound design). Ingrid Mackinnon serves as intimacy director, Sam Lyon-Behan as fight director, with casting by Alastair Coomer CDG and Naomi Downham. Hazel Holder and Cathleen McCarron join as dialect and voice coaches respectively.
See the full feature in the February issue of British Vogue, available via digital download and on newsstands from Tuesday 20 January. Vogue interview by Olivia Marks, photographs by Scott Trindle, styling by Jessica Gerardi.
Book tickets
Les Liaisons Dangereuses runs from 21 March to 6 June 2026 at the Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre, London.
Book Les Liaisons Dangereuses tickets here
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