Excellent

WATCHING Dangerous Liaisons is a chilling experience - its plot is cruel and its characters are ruthless.

The challenge for any dramatic production is to bring warmth to the story or risk losing its audience's interest.

Michael Mills, director of the Frodsham Players' production, managed this superbly during last week's staging of the 18th century French classic.

He skilfully teased humour from the text, so genuine laughter erupted throughout the play, despite its unappealing central characters and three-hour length.

Scenes such as Cecile's rape were also toned down under Mills' directorship.

Less

Other productions of Dangerous Liaisons have stressed the brutality of this scene, but as Mills showed, sometimes less is more.

Dangerous Liaisons takes place in upper class French society. La Marquise de Merteuil and Le Viconte de Valmont, played by Julia Burgess and Stuart McNeil, are former lovers who treat their 'friends' as pawns in a game of chess.

For their own amusement they plot the downfall of their friends.

But as puppet masters , who calculate which string will be pulled next, Merteuil and Valmont fail to realise they are not completely infallible.

There is no spine-tingling passion in the play but Merteuil does, as far as he is capable, fall in love with Madame de Tourvel - a woman he had been intent on ruining.

Merteuil is no Heathcliff. His acts of cruelty are not balanced by breath-taking passion, which is what makes the play so cold.

But Stuart McNeil played him with charisma and, indeed, every character in the play seemed well cast.

Although the Frodsham Players put on their production in a sports hall, which does not immediately lend itself to upper class 18th century French homes, clever lighting and Regency style furniture set the scene, as did the period costumes.

Dressing the props people as servants also helped to keep the play flowing and reinforced the gap between the bored aristocracy and busy working classes.

ecummins@guardiangrp.co.uk