STAGE REVIEWS : Games and Pains of ‘Les Liaisons’

Blessed are they who make strong choices. Director Peter Wood’s choice in the case of CTG/ Ahmanson’s “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” was not to clone the original Royal Shakespeare Company production, but to rethink Christopher Hampton’s play in terms of a new American company (Lynn Redgrave counts as an American now) and a new house.

This “Les Liz” looks the same as the Broadway version: the slatted screens, the plundered highboy, the swag of white silk gathered at the proscenium, the sense of firelight and gloom (Bob Crowley was again the designer, with lighting by Beverly Emmons.),

But the approach is different. Less poisoned, more cheerful, as befits American corruption. Redgrave and Frank Langella are as nasty and conniving as their predecessors, but they seem to be enjoying themselves more, like gamblers who have only just sat down at the table. It isn’t midnight yet; the cards haven’t got greasy.

It takes a while to see their game. Rather than tipping us off immediately that these are highly unpleasant people, director Wood encourages us to take their sexual adventures as lightly as they do.

For a good stretch of the first act, we are in the world of Restoration comedy, where nobody can get hurt and where anything can be said, as long as it’s wittily said. Depend on it, Redgrave and Langella give satisfaction here.

But towards the end of Act I, we pull back. The deflowering of a 15-year-old convent girl (Elizabeth Swackhamer) isn’t terribly amusing to watch. Langella says the minx is begging for it; we’re not so sure she was. These really are nasty folks. Is that all this play is about?

And then a very strong second act, where Shaw’s great dictum is demonstrated: In human behavior, you can’t involve the ground floor without sooner or later involving the top floor. Shaw saw hope as well as humor in that, but here we see how it can end in disaster. Pity the woman for whom Don Juan feels pity.

Langella is the Don Juan figure here, and he is perfect for the part. And this Don Juan is aware of it as a part, something you have to bone up for. Each seduction is a new play. Who am I this time?

With the curious convent girl, Langella plays the mentor--an insultingly easy role. But when faced with a married woman who is actually faithful to her husband (a rather dim Kathleen Quinlan), a more extreme strategy is required: Sincerity.

So we have a performance within a performance going on here, an assignment that Langella handles with relish. The interest is to see if we can tell when his character is actually feeling something. He begins by sharing a bit of his real self with Quinlan, as if daring himself to see how far he can go with this perversity, and ends up totally unmasked by her virtue and candor.

In an 1880s play, this would have led to his reform. In a 1980s play about the 1780s, it ends in his ruin, and Quinlan’s. Redgrave, his dramatic coach, so to speak, is also done for. As is their whole false aristocratic world. By now, it is almost midnight.

Director Wood didn’t need to spell out at this point the fact that the French Revolution was just about to break. We all know what happened in 1789. Nor, probably, did he need to end the play with Redgrave in a black dress. This lady may be damned, but she’s not defeated.

But, in general, Wood’s boldness with the play is refreshing: the dance touches, the touches of farce, even the occasional arbitrary bit of blocking. There is something puppet-like about these people--prisoners of sex, prisoners of tattle.

It’s fine that Si Osborne’s bashful suitor should practically hang his head at a 90-degree angle, and that Paddi Edwards as the crippled aunt should have herself carried around the house like a child. We are a bit in cloud cuckooland here.

And there is always Redgrave to bring us down to earth. As the Marquise de Merteuil, she is the play’s dominant intellectual force, proclaiming the rules of life even as she flouts them.

Why does she flout them? For pleasure, for revenge on the male kingdom and, most of all, in order to learn something . Redgrave’s Marquise is essentially a scientist, unfortunately experimenting with live animals, including herself.

Not a nice lot, these people, but don’t worry--they pay. At the end, Langella is definitely feeling something. It’s as visceral a death as one has seen in the theater. Yet even here there’s a sense that his character is enjoying the effect of his final remarks. An apt curtain for a play about the dangers of play.

Plays Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., with matinees Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Closes Dec. 18. $11-$32.50. 135 N. Grand Ave. (213) 410-1062.