Jessie McQueen and Devin Bell in Dangerous Liaisons | Photo by Moriah Campbell

“Love is something you use, not something you fall into.”

When La Marquise de Merteuil (Jessie McQueen) makes this provocative statement, rife with varied intention, it is at once flippant, scolding, and an affirmation. La Vicomte de Valmont (Devin Bell) seems to have made himself too vulnerable to authentic emotion and such folly could ruin their game. A theatrical adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ epistolary novel, Christopher Hampton’s Dangerous Liaisons tracks a series of increasingly high stakes seductions amongst this pair of 18th century French nobles. Their lecherous and strategized cruelty makes for delicious drama. Wren Theatre’s production, handsomely staged in the simultaneously intimate and cavernous Annex Theatre, has abundant texture for all the senses. Continue Reading