Reviews of Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the National Theatre starring Lesley Manville, Aidan Turner & Monica Barbaro

"Lesley Manville alone is worth the price of admission"

"This sumptuous production features killer turns from an imperiously coquettish Manville and an amusedly saturnine Aidan Turner"

"... the implacable, raptor-ish Manville absolutely owns this show."

"She has strong support from an amusedly saturnine Aidan Turner as her partner in seduction Valmont"

"In this precise, stately, sometimes ponderous revival by Marianne Elliott, the script is more self-consciously aphoristic than I remember. Many of the lines sound like they’re designed to be quoted rather than just spoken."

"There’s no lack of contemporary examples of predators who use sex as an exercise of power but the show doesn’t feel particularly timely or hard-hitting. Partly this is because Turner’s Valmont is played for comedy"

"Hannah van der Westhuysen makes a striking impression as this production’s Cécile, her sudden medical emergency during the ballroom scene a moment of high drama."

"[Manville's] Marquise here is worth the price of admission alone: imperiously coquettish, icily self-assured, always supremely in the moment."

"Lesley Manville’s cruel intentions are something to behold"

"Classic tale of Machiavellian sexuality is given new life at the National Theatre, pairing Manville with ‘Poldark’ star Aidan Turn"

"This mix of sumptuousness and precision is typical of Marianne Elliott's sweeping staging of scandalous French classic Les Liaisons Dangereuses,... And when its finely tooled pieces start to fall out of place, it's devastating."

"Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread) is characteristically brilliant as the Marquise de Merteuil"

"Turner's got a lovable, wheedling, boyish charm that makes him totally convincing as a serial seducer who's just too much fun for high society to turn its back on."

"Some bits of it are still invigorating for 21st century audiences, especially Merteuil's rousing speeches about how women must take charge of their own sexual destinies to survive in a patriarchal world. Other parts, less so."

"This story's mixture of fun romantic intrigue and horrible darkness isn't easy to navigate, and some of its earlier scenes land stiffly."

"Still, the greatest strength of Hampton's reworking is also the biggest triumph of this production: the icy brilliance of Merteuil, powered by Manville's wonderful performance."

"From its opening moments, Marianne Elliott’s production subtly reconfigures Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses for the MeToo generation."

"Aidan Turner endows him with the conspicuous charm that Merteuil ascribes to him, making him puppyish and almost clownish until he reveals the pure power and malice beneath."

"“Win or die,” she concludes, and Manville, who is terrifyingly magnificent, gives the words frightening, icy force."

"Elliott – returning to the National as a director after more than a decade – has created a sumptuous, expansive picture of a decaying society, rotten at its core."

"Monica Barbaro... plays her with tremulous directness"

"Manville and Turner are simply superb, their performances deep and thoughtful. They make the characters fallibly human, and Elliott makes the evening sing."

"Lesley Manville and Aidan Turner are superb and Marianne Elliott’s production is spectacular, but this titillating ’80s hit has had its day"

"Les Liaisons Dangereuses... is a classic play, though I’m not convinced that’s the same as being a good one."

"It was always trashy, mind, and in a post-#MeToo world I’d say there are some hard questions to be asked about its titillating realpolitik."

"Accepting all that, this is a pretty good production of it, as you’d expect from the great Marianne Elliott’s first show at the NT in over a decade, with a to die for cast headed by Lesley Manville and Aiden Turner."

"Manville is of course an absurdly good actor, one of the all time greats, and Turner is not bloody bad either."

"The play has issues but by god do they work it, and not necessarily in the ways you’d expect."

"Manville’s Merteuil is sexy but not overtly sensuous. Rather, she is cerebral, an expert court manipulator"

"Hampton’s play has endured in large part because it’s titillating – a rare quality in theatre – and some of it now feels wildly out of step with the times."

"... it’s a really good production with two sensational leads, of a play that has long stopped being a sexy novelty and now kind of sits as a guilty pleasure."

"Love is a fight for power in this bold staging"

"A queenly Lesley Manville steals the show in this dark, rageful tale of seduction as contact sport"

"Together, they are deliciously horrible, although it is Manville (who played Cecile in the play’s original staging) that steals the show. She looks queenly in magnificent ornate dress, its vivid red denoting the bloodsport of her scheme."

"Turner as Valmont is an Irish-accented serial seducer, louche and playful rather than truly dangerous"

"Sexual seduction and conquest is presented in choreographed movement here... It is an innovative, if high stakes, metaphor for seduction as a contact sport and looks beautiful as they tango, swish and sway."

"But it is pretty rather than passionate or alluring in the lesser charged first-half of this production, not fevered or sexy enough. It takes on a more prowling, combative quality later on"

"A moral story at its core, the story builds to the mutual destruction of both its central villains, by which time this stylish production has finally found its dark, menacing heart."

"Aidan Turner’s dandy lacks teeth"

"Lesley Manville is the scheming Marquise de Merteuil in Marianne Elliott’s production at the National Theatre, which has plenty of spectacle but not enough bite"

"It’s a curious evening. Marianne Elliott’s production isn’t short of spectacle. There are balletic ensemble sequences, choreographed by Tom Jackson Greaves, that evoke society rituals and the inner turmoil of the principal characters."

"What’s often missing, though, is the sense of abject cruelty that ought to lie at the heart of this story of cold-blooded seduction."

"[Manville] brings the requisite amount of hauteur and a cold, calculating heart to the marquise."

"Turner’s Vicomte de Valmont, the marquise’s dissolute ex-lover, is a more awkward proposition. With his lilting Irish accent and twinkling eyes, he seems more of a loveable rogue than a heartless predator."

"Lesley Manville adds heart to a glittering, icy production"

"Despite superb performances by Aidan Turner and Monica Barbaro, Christopher Hampton’s play at the National Theatre is easier to admire than love"

"How wonderful that she [Manville] is now back as the queen bee: an icily magnificent Marquise, supreme at the centre of Marianne Elliott’s sumptuously nasty revival. Her partner in crime is Aidan Turner as Valmont, sleek and slippery as an eel. Together they make a glitteringly poisonous pair."

"... this is a dazzling production, even if hampered somewhat by the knottiness of the plot and the queasiness of the material."

"Elliott brings a shrewd, contemporary eye to this repellent world. Rosanna Vize’s brilliant set combines beauty with brutality"

"... Elliott tilts the focus, quietly foregrounding the women. Key to her staging is the Marquise’s realisation that she cannot win."

"Manville is, in fact, pitch-perfect throughout: every coquettish laugh calculated... She’s a superb actor, owning the stage completely."

"It’s horribly resonant and done with incisive intelligence. Is it enough? Not quite."

"Divertingly nasty"

"Lesley Manville and Aidan Turner are lethally entertaining in cruel games of seduction that lack a sense of purpose"

"Hampton’s drama implicitly struck out at the venality of Thatcher’s Britain. What it has to say to us today is less clear."

"This revival by Marianne Elliott displays a preoccupation with glossy surfaces, judgemental mobs, gossip and takedowns that chimes with our social-media obsessed era. But it lacks bite and atmosphere, the intricate symmetrical plotting of its torments, temptations and scandals less shocking than mechanical."

"Hampton’s dialogue is exceptionally well sprung, packed with bon mots and double entendres; initially, Manville’s scarlet-clad, imperviously poised Merteuil and Turner’s wolfish Valmont bounce thrillingly about on it. But, as if the production were a gilded balloon, the air slowly seeps out of it."

"... Elliott’s production never really makes a convincing case for the play’s importance in the here and now. As a drama, it emerges as elegant and divertingly nasty; it needs to matter more."

"Les Liaisons Dangereuses is sexy, sinister – and ultimately unsatisfying"

"Lesley Manville is magnificent alongside a repellant Aidan Turner, two erotic conquistadors in an exposé of the play’s ugly core"

"Earlier revivals have leant into the thrill of watching amoral libertines behave despicably with admittedly variable results. Not so Marianne Elliot’s chilly, portentous production... which refuses to sugar coat the play’s rotten ugly core. It is, after all, hard these days to play a sexual predator for laughs."

"Everyone is complicit in this precision engineered web of duplicity and treachery in which self invention is the only game in town."

"Manville is magnificent as the Merteuil, the sort of woman who quaffs back oysters for breakfast. Every line of Hampton’s dialogue drips from her like poisoned honey."

"... Aidan Turner who mixes a lazy saturnine charm with puerile boyishness and something much more repellent."

"Yet Elliot’s insistence on turning the play into a spectacle of irredeemable decay doesn’t always reap dividends. Those allergic to the use of interpretative ballet... won’t find their prejudices allayed."

"Hampton’s play demands a lightness of touch, not the whiff of heavy melodrama. I admired this production but I can’t say I enjoyed it."

"Lesley Manville and Aidan Turner turn up the sexual heat — but does it work?"

"She’s a proper genius, he’s a fine actor — this Les Liaisons Dangereuses should be funny, sexy, nasty and zippy"

"... why does the attraction between the star pairing of Lesley Manville and Aidan Turner feel so fatally tepid in the National’s revival"

"Manville, 70, couldn’t time a line badly if she tried; Turner, 42, has moments of wolfish glee, of wry elan, of shirt-open sensuality. But he’s not the capering carnal carnivore he’s billed as"

"Here, the serrated dialogue feels dwarfed by the huge, empty, mirror-lined stage, by between-scene dances that, yes, have some elegant passion about them, but also slow things down and spell things out."

"Manville is a proper genius... Yet she doesn’t feel all-in here."

"... it should all be so much funnier, sexier, nastier and zippier than this."