Dangerous Liaisons

This ribald production of the titillating classic Dangerous Liaisons troubles for reasons that neither Choderlos de Laclos' original 1782 novel nor Chistopher Hampton's English text – faithfully staged here – do.

The story of the web-weaving manipulations of two licentious aristocrats, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, the text races and is racy – hyperventilatingly so. Under the glittering direction of Stephen Nicolazzo, the company seize each snappy head-whip. Snippets of drag songs and airtight blocking, glorious breasts, visual delight and razor-sharp passages of dialogue licked out by the cast, all carry their MO – to make queer. Valmont, the priapic mastermind, is played by a woman and steals the show. And there's some of the trouble: every overemphasised 'CoUNTry' and every crotch munch, although very funny, slicks over the text's more intricate themes. Is this the point? Perhaps.

As the play shows us the consequences we're left in Pigalle, pants down, without a carriage ride home. Little Ones succeed, however, in letting the horror of society's sexual hierarchy slip beneath the radar. Maybe this is the trade-off? With the camp and gender reversals, we permit and laugh at more than we usually may; a powerful woman play presenting, without implicit judgement, that hierarchising and abusive masculine trait.