Les Liaisons Dangereuses

This show has now closed, click here for a listing of current and future London shows

Dance
Closed 14 August 2005

Sadler's Wells
Rosebery Avenuw, London

A Major New Dance Drama

Set in 18th-century Paris, Les Liaisons Dangereuses tells the tragic tale of seduction and deceit that follows the cruel social games played by Marquise de Merteuil and her former lover Vicomte Valmont as their aristocratic world slowly falls apart.

Adam Cooper's Les Liaisons Dangereuses is based on the novel by Choderlos de Laclos and is concieved and directed by Adam Cooper and Lez Brotherston with music by Philip Feeney.

This full length production is the first project for the newly formed Adam Cooper Productions and premiered in Tokyo earlier this year to huge acclaim.

Adam Cooper's credits include performing in Matthew Bourne's legendary productions of Swan Lake and Cinderella, starring in, and choreographing, On Your Toes at The Royal Festival Hall in 2003 and playing 'Don Lockwood' in Singin' in the Rain at Sadler's Wells Theatre in 2004. He was nominated for an Olivier Award for his choreography of the musical Grand Hotel at the Donmar Warehouse.

"How do you make a ballet out of Laclos' novel? Do you go for the selective approach adopted in 1968 by Antony Tudor with Knight Errant? Or do you go for full-blown narrative fidelity? Cooper has opted for the second way - mistakenly, since this means a great many significant looks and flourished letters in aid of narrative exposition. It also results in a numbing succession of erotic duets: Valmont and Madame de Merteuil, Madame de Merteuil and the Comte de Gercourt, and so on and so on. The miracle, though, is that despite the tangle of intrigues and identities, Cooper still manages to tell the story clearly most of the time... This production is more about spectacle and story-telling than choreography. It comes across as musical theatre without words (although there are actually a few snatches of singing), which is hardly surprising, given Cooper's recent move into musicals." The Independent on Sunday

"At the start, it looks like being fascinating, as masked figures in black, carrying candelabra, pull aside drifty curtains to reveal the latest marvellous set by the genius designer Lez Brotherston... However, neither in dance nor drama does this adaptation of the Laclos novel live up to its setting. The characters are mostly one-dimensional... The second act has more pace, more ideas and more choreography... The drawback is that Philip Feeney's busy score, often pastiche baroque, shifts into the mode of screechy film music, quite inadequate, as well as off-putting... All this is out-and-out melodrama, and, sadly, this Les Liaisons Dangereuses scarcely rises above that level." The Sunday Times

"Adam Cooper has devised a modern masque in his version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, co-produced with designer Lez Brotherston. The immoral tale, based on Choderlos de Laclos's 1782 novel, is told through stylised dance, song and descriptive music. Philip Feeney's score combines baroque pastiche with up-to-date sound effects. Cooper can't quite bring it off. The cast is limited to nine, but the intrigues are bewildering unless you know the story already... Though Brotherston's mirrored set is splendid, his and Cooper's staging is turgid. Fewer characters and seduction scenes would pack more punch than the show's overblown striving for spectacle." The Observer