The Game
(Photo © Joe Schuyler)
Better book that Broadway theater now! The salient question is not how long it will take The Game — the Barrington Stage Company’s world-premiere musical version of Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses — to transfer, but why it took two whole centuries for someone to realize the property’s potential. Writers Amy Powers and David Topchik, composer Megan Cavallari, and director Julianne Boyd have pretty much nailed it, and the resulting show has minimal need for further tweaking.
A 1782 epistolary potboiler, Les Liaisons Dangereuses has everything one could wish for in terms of a juicy plot: two sexual schemers (one male, one female) and, in counterpoint, a pair of young lovers who become their pawns. Throw in a sanctimoniously faithful wife as the ultimate conquest and you have a heady mixture of intrigue, pathos, and humor.
Playing the Marquise de Merteuil, that consummate manipulator, mezzo Sara Ramirez owns this show. Her voice is a wonder — cat and cream combined — and she can rivet attention with one arched eyebrow. Cristin Boyle, fresh out of NYU, is delightful as the ingenue Cecile; she’s called upon to giggle, fumble, and tragicomically sob, but later in the story, when her pain is all too real, she has the wherewithal to break our hearts. Boyle also possesses a strong and lovely soprano that floats over the fray. Her beloved, the Chevalier Danceny, is Cupid incarnate as portrayed by Greg Mills (whose résumé includes lead roles in a number of national tours). He’s fairly subdued and polite, a tableau vivant of courtly poses, until the Marquise gets him in her clutches. Then he’s an enchanted wanton, struggling against all odds — and a duo of entwining nymphettes — to convince himself that “Love Is Better.”
The two other principals disappoint. As the Vicomte de Valmont (indelibly marked as the John Malkovich role in the 1988 film version of Christopher Hampton’s stage adaptation of Laclos), Christopher Innvar makes no apparent effort to play to the period; he slouches about like a soap star on hiatus, leaving us with no clue as to why so many women find him irresistible. Where’s the charm? As Madame de Tourvel, that sacrificial lamb, Heather Ayers is properly prim — at least until she loosens her stays — but also strident. Her piercing rendition of “My Sin” spoils what should be the show’s emotional apogee.
As Madame de Volange, Cecile’s socially ambitious mother, Griffin Gardner deftly taps the comic potential of the witty “Be a Bride.” The song culminates in a series of suggestive bustle thrusts and the far-from-tender maternal advice, “Grit your teeth like so.”
Kudos are due Michael Anania for his unfussy yet sumptuous set, lit a misty midnight blue by Jeff Croiter. Fabio Toblini’s costumes could use more work: petticoats, to start, for the otherwise flimsy farthingales, and it might be best to drop the Marquise’s puce coat, which reads like a ’40s bathrobe. Also useful would be a bit of script doctoring by someone of the stature of a Richard Wilbur. A few too many slapdash rhymes — e.g., “By the way, how’s your prude / Have you got her acting lewd?” — break the mood.
But these are minor cavils. The production as a whole is a triumph and an exciting opportunity for anyone eager to attend the birth of a promising new musical.
