Les Liaisons Dangereuses review – love is a fight for power in this bold staging

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

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos was serving as an artillery officer while writing his epistolary novel about a cold game of seduction in the salons of 18th-century France which backfires on its conniving architects. It shows: love is a fight for power and control in his story, every bit as strategic as a military campaign.

Popularly known through the 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons, starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich (and also the teen version of it, 1999’s Cruel Intentions), this production is directed by Marianne Elliott and uses an adaptation by Christopher Hampton – whose play of the novel, first staged in 1985, was also the basis for the film starring Close.