DANGER LURKS BEHIND DAZZLE IN ‘LIAISONS’

The wallpaper in the foyer of the Music Box Theatre takes its theme from an old French tapestry: a maid coyly swinging in the forest while a swain adores from below. These charming figures are seen in a starker light after an evening at the Music Box’s new attraction, “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.”

Like everything else worth writing about on Broadway this season, it’s a British import. Christopher Hampton wrote the play three years ago for the Royal Shakespeare Company, fashioning it after the famous French novel-in-letters by Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803). It has been wildly successful in London and is likely to repeat that success in New York, although the Music Box audience was a bit slow to warm up to it the other night. It goes against the American grain to be this unromantic about sex.

“What else is there to do in the country?” got a good laugh, but that wasn’t really a characteristic line. The people in “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” can’t laugh sex off. They’ve become obsessed with it, as one might become obsessed with playing cards if one had had enough time on one’s hands.

These people have nothing but time--and money, of course. It’s 1782, and their only task in life is to dress well and to say malicious things behind each other’s backs. That is what being an aristocrat means. We have met their kind in Restoration drama, where they seemed quaint. Here they seem . . . dangerous.

Dazzling, though. The men aren’t fops and the women don’t simper. Everyone pursues his or her intention quite vigorously, with startling candor. One might say: pursues his prey. “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” is about sex as a blood sport, and the danger is part of the appeal.

Sex is also central to the battle of the sexes. Le Vicompte de Valmont (Alan Rickman) and La Marquise de Merteiul (Lindsay Duncan) are “devoted to one another.” This means that they have taken each other’s measure in bed and are now engaged in a competition to see how many other people they can ruin, which would not be their term for it.

“Educate,” perhaps. In one scene, the Vicompte educates a convent maid (Beatie Edney) in her boudoir and, as he predicted, the process is practically automatic, like winding up the clock before bedtime.

Then he runs into a rare thing: a faithful wife (Jean Anderson). She may not love her husband (“love “ in this play is not a concomitant of marriage), but her honor and her piety forbid betraying him. This represents a real challenge, and the Vicompte sets his traps with extreme cunning, using the most irresistible bait of all, sincerity.

As he tells the Marquise in one of their cozy little chats (oddly reminiscent of those in Henry James), he is actually quite smitten with the lady. “Then you’ll botch it,” she predicts. He does not botch it, but the preliminaries are unusually prolonged. Meanwhile, the Marquise is “educating” the convent girl’s suitor (Hilton McRae).

A complicated bill of fare. The audience must work hard to stay abreast of the action. The psychology of the characters is even more convoluted. The virtuous wife succumbs to the Vicompte partly in order to punish herself for being so prideful as to think she could never be tempted by him. This is not a penance that would occur to a non-religious heroine.

Even more perversely, the Vicompte discards the wife once he has won her. Not because he’s bored with her. He loves her. But he must prove to his partner in crime, the Marquise, that he is as cool a master of the game as she.

This deed leads him directly into the Marquise’s trap, and the story ends with his ruin in a duel. The Marquise will live for another day. But with 1789 looming, it may not be a long life.

Then again, she may be dancing at the Congress of Vienna. A conniver as beautiful and farsighted as the Marquise is not easily brought down. She doesn’t dabble in seduction, the Vicompte’s mistake. It is her life program, pursued not for purposes of pleasure, but of knowledge.

And above all of revenge. She has known since girlhood that men “hold all the cards.” It is up to a woman to “invent herself” so as to prevail against them. Otherwise, one suffers the fate of convent girls and faithful wives.

Under the play’s cool facade--everyone behaves with perfect composure, even when behaving outrageously--this is a scalding look at human nature. And a truly concerned one. You don’t feel that the ending has been dragged in to excuse the improprieties of what has gone before, as in “Moll Flanders” or “Fanny Hill.”

Rather, it stems from the obsessiveness of the Vicompte and his circle: their inability to regard other people as anything but sexual prey, their lack of imagination in regard to the side effects of promiscuity. (The convent girl has a disastrous abortion and there are hints that the Vicompte may be on the verge of psychosis, possibly brought on by venereal disease.)

At the same time, we’re fascinated by the boldness of these people, by their sense of being absolute masters of their world. The play is less concerned with sex than with power. Sex for these people is power. To “have” someone is to have something on that person, and the planning session is the most delicious part of it. Next to the replay, of course.

Never has a comedy of manners dealt so frankly with such reprehensible people. But under Howard Davies’ direction, their bearing is superb. Lindsay Duncan’s tousled blond beauty is so beguiling that you can absolutely divorce it from the Marquise’s villainous behavior. She’ll definitely survive the Revolution. What executioner could chop off that pretty head?

Alan Rickman as the Vicompte is the latest in the RSC’s line of thin, devastating leading men. His smile has a hook in it. His eyes flash like a wolf’s. A virtuous woman might well decide to save this idle devil from himself.

Jean Anderson shows the pain and confusion that might result, while Beatie Edney suggests that a convent girl might show more resilience. In time her character will be as bland a hypocrite as her mother (Kristin Milward).

Hilton McRae suffers a like sea-change as he loses his decency to the Marquise. “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” is definitely not about nice people. But they are fascinating people, and one can’t say that they didn’t exist--and don’t still. Update the costumes, coarsen the dialogue, add cocaine, and this might be a Hollywood story. Or a Washington one.

Bob Crowley’s physical production is anything but coarse. The setting is an all-silk boudoir, lit with a lemony light. At the right is a tall white highboy, with pearls spilling carelessly out of half-shut drawers. In the background, screens. Jutting from the wall, a flagless flagpole. Honi soit qui mal y pense .