Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos began writing his masterpiece, the epistolary
novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, on an isolated island in the Bay of Biscay, describing
it to a friend as ‘something extraordinary, intriguing, something that will resonate
throughout the world even when I am no longer here’.
Almost two hundred years later, Laclos’s novel was taken up by the British playwright
Christopher Hampton, who created one of the most celebrated literary adaptations
in modern theatre and film. Stephen Frears’s screen version, starring Glenn Close
and John Malkovich, left an indelible mark on popular culture and earned Hampton the
Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
On the eve of the French Revolution, in the autumn and winter of the 1780s,
moving between salons, bedrooms and aristocratic residences in and around Paris, the
Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont set in motion an erotic war suspended
between desire and cruelty. Around them gathers an intricate web of seduction and
manipulation: the young and curious Cécile, the inexperienced Chevalier Danceny, and
the seemingly virtuous and far from naive Madame de Tourvel.
In both Laclos and Hampton, erotic tension serves as a means of exploring relationships
of power, domination and conquest in a world that does not yet realise it
stands on the brink of disappearance. In the background, the guillotine is already being
prepared. Beneath the games of seduction and control stand protagonists caught between
the fear of love, the search for meaning, and an almost desperate hunger for life.
Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses has been performed continuously since its
premiere in 1985, repeatedly asking what lies beneath tightly laced corsets, how much
truth there is between the sheets, and what remains of desire at a moment when life itself
seems to be losing its meaning.
The production will be directed by Janusz Kica, whose work has long been held
in high regard by Zagreb audiences.
