Dangerous Liaisons - Stratford Festival

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Ideas and Insights ArcelorMittal Dofasco applauds the artists, artisans and staff behind every outstanding experience at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. It’s About Love Notes from a conversation with director Ethan McSweeny Compiled by David Prosser I must confess a slight aversion to director’s notes, which, like so many things, I suppose, originates in an adolescent trauma: in high school I had a wonderful theatre teacher who, when confronted by a baroque explanation of an obtuse acting choice, would lower her spectacles and say, in a withering tone, “Well, we’ll just have to put a note in the program about that!” In any case, a substantial portion of directing boils down to creative problem solving, and the Festival Theatre’s unique space presents some particular challenges to staging a work set in a series of salons and bedchambers – how to create these interiors on a thrust stage while preserving the fluid, cinematic pace of the action In raw, practical terms, how does one get the Marquise onstage in the middle of a card game, say Or Valmont in the midst of an amorous encounter The decadent aristocracy of Liaisons play their games of love and chance poised on the edge of an abyss that they don’t see coming, when their teetering, untenable ancien régime will finally succumb to the Revolution. In the 1980s, when Christopher Hampton wrote the play, there were wonderful parallels to be drawn between the greed and excess of that seminal decade and the greed and excess of the 1780s, when the play is set. Interestingly, as we approach the story in 2010, the gap between rich and poor has, if anything, increased. Eventually, designer Santo Loquasto and I located an artistic answer to the practical staging problem within the social fabric of the play: corroded by boredom and numbed by surfeit, these aristocrats have lost the ability to do anything for themselves and rely on their servants to dress them, to feed them and even to literally push them on and off the stage. You might observe the casual disregard shown the Third Estate, or the careless consumption of luxurious foods by a people so myopically self-absorbed that they are blind to the starvation going on around them. I half believe that it is these same servants who, having witnessed the moral dissolution of their masters, will rise up to rid themselves of a society that has rotted from within. As my own ideas about the play continue to evolve, I am increasingly aware that beyond the politics of class and gender, Liaisons is really all about love. Listen for the number of times and the variety of ways the word love is batted about and how it is compared and contrasted with its corollaries happiness (usually meaning spiritual contentment) and pleasure (19th-century code for sex). “Love,” says the Marquise de Merteuil, is a tool, a “lubricant to nature,” and it cannot coexist with happiness or pleasure without the presence of deceit. “Those who are most worthy of it,” contributes Mme de Rosemonde, “are never made happy by it.” How and when do we know we are in love What does it take to believe someone else To believe ourselves When does it give us pleasure Or make us happy While we thrill to the wilful venality of Valmont and Merteuil and revel in their exposure of the ever-present social hypocrisies surrounding men and women, their story would not have endured for more than two centuries in novels, films and plays if it didn’t concern itself with a subject central to our common experience: love and the lies we tell in its pursuit. The gap between the servants and their increasingly helpless masters haunts the periphery of the play and points toward its inevitable conclusion. Yet though our protagonists and antagonists merrily fiddle on the cusp of their own demise, we love them for their human struggles all the same. 6
Dangerous Liaisons by Christopher Hampton This production is dedicated to the memory of former company member Goldie Semple. Director Designer Lighting Designer Sound Designer Movement Fight Director Assistant Director Assistant Designer Assistant Lighting Designer Music Consultant Assistant Fight Director Stage Manager Assistant Stage Managers Production Assistant Production Stage Manager Interval Ethan McSweeny Santo Loquasto Robert Thomson Todd Charlton Shona Morris Todd Campbell Darcy Evans Alix Dolgoy Siobhán Sleath Michael Roth Michael Dufays Bona Duncan Martine Beland, Holly Korhonen Loreen Gibson Margaret Palmer There will be one interval of 20 minutes. Audience Alert This production includes brief nudity and the use of haze and fog. The Cast The Aristocracy in order of speaking La Marquise de Merteuil Seana McKenna Mme de Volanges Yanna McIntosh Cécile Volanges, her daughter Bethany Jillard Le Vicomte de Valmont Tom McCamus Mme de Rosemonde, his aunt Martha Henry La Présidente de Tourvel Sara Topham Le Chevalier Danceny Michael Therriault The Third Estate Major-domo, to Merteuil Azolan, Valmont’s valet Émilie, a courtesan Footmen Maids Rousseau, Rosemonde’s dog Sanjay Talwar Paul Dunn Martha Farrell Quincy Armorer Bruce Godfree Adrian Griffin Barbara Fulton Stacie Steadman Brigit Wilson Fuzz Bucket Understudies: Quincy Armorer (Major-domo), Barbara Fulton (Mme de Volanges, Mme de Rosemonde), Bruce Godfree (Le Chevalier Danceny, Azolan), Adrian Griffin (Le Vicomte de Valmont), Stacie Steadman (Cécile Volanges, Émilie), Brigit Wilson (La Marquise de Merteuil, La Présidente de Tourvel) Dangerous Liaisons is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH, INC. Setting Various salons and bedrooms in and around Paris one autumn and winter in the 1780s. CoSTUME DESIGNS BY SANTo LoQUASTo (FRom LEFT): La MARQUISE DE MERTEUIL, AND Le VICoMTE DE VALMoNT 7
Page 1 and 2: FESTIVAL THEATRE AUGUST 3 TO OCTOBE
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Dangerous Liaisons - Stratford Festival

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