Our rehearsals are being interrupted this week by auditions for the Department of Theatre's Spring Productions. Last night we did some work on intimacy and focus with Merteuil/Valmont, Merteuil/Volanges, and Valmont/Tourvel. I asked the actors to sit in chairs across from each other and do their scenes without the blocking, but just to connect with their scene partner. Carolyn Conover (Merteuil) pointed out that this slowed down the pace of the scenes, and really allowed her to think about the language. One scene between Merteuil and Volanges became much more volatile, and we decided that it makes sense for those cousins to be close cousins who interact like siblings. We also tried a few of the scenes with the actors sitting in chairs back-to-back. The face-to-face versions tended to make the scenes sexier, while the back-to-back versions made them more theatrical. It was a fun exercise, and I think the actors all found it useful. It is great to have them off-book, and the show has really been growing now that they don't have scripts in their hands.
I mention some art history in the director's notes, so I thought I might elaborate on that. In a lot of ways
Les Liaisons dangereuses depicts the sexy rococo world of a Fragonard painting. For example,
The Swing:
The usual narrative of this painting is that a clergyman is pushing a woman on the swing while her lover, concealed below, is positioned for the voyeuristic experience of seeing up her dress. A menacing Cupid looks on, with his finger to his lips. (I have been referring to this trope as the "shushing Cupid," which isn't really the technical term.) The play of shadow and light, the tactility of the leaves, and jaunty pink shoe casually flying through the air all contribute to a sense of play combined with danger.
Another Fragonard painting is
The Bolt, which is practically an illustration of what the scene of seduction between Valmont and Cecile might look like:
This was the illustration on the cover of the version of
Les Liaisons dangereuses that I read as an undergraduate. (The cover of the French paperback I'm currently using has an illustration of Valmont writing a letter on Emilie's back.) Elspeth Williams, our costume designer, used
The Bolt as an image of inspiration and placed it on the front cover of the binder where she is keeping her script and renderings and research materials. Again we see the play of light and shadow, with a sense of touch imbued to the fabric. The woman's dress merges with the fabric of the bed, which is the clear destination of where the scene is heading. The woman's gestures tend to be understood as pretending to fight off the man's advances. It is unclear whether her left hand is trying to keep him from locking the door or helping him close the bolt. This painting raises an issue of consent that is uncomfortable for us today. The eighteenth century had a far different expectation of what constituted consent. Both Cecile and Tourvel submit to Valmont, but the "consent" he elicits from them would now leave his actions open to being considered sexual assault.
The sexual dangers and pleasures depicted in these two paintings by Fragonard, which date from the 1770s, contrast with the domestic melodrama of paintings by Greuze from the same period:
In this painting,
The Father's Curse (1778), a son is going off to war against his family's wishes. Amy S. Wyngaard has specifically compared the financial situation of the family in this painting with the family helped by Valmont in
Les Liaisons dangereuses (Wyngaard,
From Savage to Citizen, 2004, pp. 108-109). Tourvel is moved by the scene of domestic charity staged by Valmont as a spectacle for Tourvel's servant who has been spying on him. In this sense, I see Tourvel as partaking more in the world of Greuze, while Valmont and Merteuil prefer the world of Fragonard.
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