I was excited when I found out about a year ago that a new stage adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses was going to be produced at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées, a private theater in Paris. I’m not the greatest fan of the Christopher Hampton play, which I’ve seen on stage twice (including the first production with Alan Rickman), for several reasons — one of which is that reinventing Valmont’s Merteuil-scripted breakup letter to Madame de Tourvel as an in-person breakup, with “It’s beyond my control” as the only cue from Merteuil, doesn’t really work for me. (The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that the novel’s Valmont doesn’t quite realize what he’s doing in sending the letter. Also, “It’s beyond my control” is not a good substitute for Ce n’est pas ma faute.)

So, new stage adaptation! Exciting! I was disappointed when I thought I wouldn’t be able to see it; it was originally set to close December 31 of last year and there was just no way I could get to Paris before then. Then it got extended until the end of April and I was trying to work something out (with some logistical difficulty since I was supposed to be in London in late May), and then, o joy! It got extended again until the end of July. Obviously the extensions meant that it was popular. The reviews were good, and it got nominated for several prestigious Molière awards (with Delphine Depardieu, Gerard Depardieu’s niece, winning the one for Best Actress, private theater).

Reader, I saw it.

And … oh man. Depardieu is good. Valentin de Carbonnières has his moments as Valmont. Salomé de Villiers as Madame de Tourvel is kind of okay, but the role is so thin that there’s almost nothing left of it. The adaptation makes Hampton look like Shakespeare.

There are, for one, major and odd changes to the plot that totally change the character dynamics. Danceny is now Merteuil’s boy-toy lover from the start (his character is now an amalgam of Danceny and Belleroche), though he still has his puppy-love romance with Cécile. For some reason Merteuil is also having sex with her valet. Madame de Volanges, said to be forever ailing, is excised from the story altogether, and the role of telling Tourvel that Valmont is a dangerous scoundrel is given to his aunt, Madame de Rosemonde, who explains that she nonetheless receives her rascally nephew at the château because “he amuses her.” The gradual development of the Valmont/Tourvel relationship — his departure from the château at her request, his return, their growing intimacy, her near-surrender and panicked flight to Paris, his subterfuge to obtain a meeting with her by claiming that he wants to return her letters and make amends before embracing religion — is dropped completely. Instead, what happens is something like this:

Valmont: I’m madly in love with your beauty and virtue.
Tourvel: These feelings offend me. Don’t ever speak of them again, monsieur.

(some time later)

Valmont to Merteuil: I moved too fast and failed with her. But I have a backup plan. I will appeal to her compassion.

Valmont to Tourvel, looking dejected: Ah, why do you hate me, madame?
Tourvel: I don’t hate you at all! I want you to be happy.
Valmont: But you don’t love me! How can I ever be happy? Okay, I’m going to kill myself. Good-bye.
Tourvel: No no, I beg you, don’t go! (throws her arms around him and collapses into his arms) From now on I am entirely yours, with no refusals or regrets.

(passionate kiss)

Yes, I exaggerate, but only slightly.

And then there’s the marquise de Merteuil. Again, Depardieu is a fine actress, and she is delightful when she turns her voice to a dangerously silky sing-song. Unfortunately, whether it’s her idea or the producer’s, much of her time is spent barking and yelling (especially in her interaction with both Valmont and Danceny). Also, in this version, her quest for power and vengeance is given the fashionable motive of trauma, specifically, the trauma of marital rape. In her monologue recounting her life story to Valmont (the equivalent of Letter 81), the marquise suddenly lapses into a hurt, tremulous tone when describing her wedding night — which the novel’s Merteuil says she saw only as an opportunity to learn. This Merteuil, suddenly wide-eyed with PTSD, recounts in a half-whisper, “I remember his breath on my face, the weight of his stomach on me.” This makes especially little sense since only a few moments earlier Merteuil was discussing her achievement of steely self-discipline as a child, when she trained herself to smile pleasantly while jabbing her hand with a fork under the table. (Oh, and Merteuil’s statement that her principles are truly her own and not acquired by accident and followed out of habit like those of other women are for some reason transferred to her earlier scene with Danceny. What?)

Valmont’s Merteuil-instigated breakup with Tourvel is handled far worse than in the Hampton version, which at least preserves the format of Merteuil slyly telling Valmont a story about a “friend of hers” who also got involved with an unsuitable woman and needed a female friend’s advice to break it off. Here, Merteuil explicitly demands that Valmont break up with Tourvel as the price of a renewed relationship with her. Ce n’est pas ma faute also gets a radically different meaning. In the novel, Merteuil seizes on a passing phrase by which Valmont seeks to explain why he needs to play the role of Tourvel’s devoted lover and transforms it, with pointed and mocking cruelty, into the means of Valmont’s breakup with Tourvel. In the play, it was something Valmont said to Merteuil during their breakup while trying to excuse his misdeeds. She still feels hurt by it. So she now demands that Valmont say it to Tourvel, and not once but multiple times. (He later reports to her that it was “at least six.”) When Merteuil nonetheless rejects Valmont because she can see that he still loves Tourvel, the duo’s quarrel turns into a shouting match in which Valmont throws Merteuil to the floor and also rips off her wig and drags her to the mirror; since his shouted, sputtering lines are barely comprehensible, I wasn’t sure if he’s telling her that she’s getting old or that her hideous soul is visible in her face. (There is so much yelling in this production that it might as well be “Les Liaisons Dangereuses as written by Dostoyevsky, minus discussions of God and the destiny of Russia.”)

Along the way, there’s the Cécile subplot. The scene of Cécile’s sexual initiation is here less physically coercive and more manipulative than in the book or the Hampton play, but it still manages to be repulsively sleazy as the play’s Valmont cajoles Cécile into showing him her breasts (they’re both sitting with their backs to the audience), drools over how pretty they are, and then puts her hand on his crotch and inquires, “Can you feel my snake rearing up?” Errr … okay. There’s more crude humor of this sort in this adaptation: after surprising Cécile in a tête-a-tête with Danceny, Merteuil asks if Danceny has “shown her his nasty part” (Cécile: “The chevalier Danceny has a nasty part?”) and assures her that all is well as long as he didn’t put his “nasty part” in her “pleasure cave.” She also jokes about Gercourt, Cécile’s intended against whom she has a grudge, having a “snake” of unsatisfactory size. I feel dumber just typing this out.

At the end, Cécile has her miscarriage at Rosemonde’s château; Tourvel also dies there in Rosemonde’s care, but not before learning that Valmont did have a heart and it was hers, because she receives from him a “by the time you read this, I’ll be dead” letter explaining that he has lost everything when he lost her and he’s about to get himself killed, on purpose, in a duel. Tourvel dies. Merteuil learns of Valmont’s death and her disgrace from Danceny. Alone and despairing, she suddenly sees candles light up at the front of the stage where Valmont’s dead body, laid out on a bier, emerges from the darkness. A terrified Merteuil claws helplessly at the air. Suddenly, we’ve segued into the horror genre. Curtain call. Nice costumes?

Maybe I’m not getting something. Why this adaptation? Why is it so popular? Have the critics who praise it actually read Les Liaisons Dangereuses? Should I revise my opinion of French culture writers downward? And when are we going to get an actual good adaptation of Liaisons?