Song of a Reformed Headhunter

TCH and I watched Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage , translated by Christopher Hampton, directed by Matthew Warchus, at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, on West 45th Street. TCH told me there was some controversy over renaming the theater after some big dead executive rather than after someone in the arts, like a writer, actor or producer. Tidbits of information like this one remind me of worlds beyond my ken. All the stage is a world unto itself. Christopher Hampton also translated Les Liaisons Dangereuses , which I watched last year. He translated Reza's French play into English for its London production, and then into American for Broadway. Besides references to American places and events--strange I cannot remember any from the play, a fact which perhaps proves these references superficial to the play--the characters swear Americanese.  Two couples meet to talk about a fight between their sons; their attempt at sweet reason quickly degenerates into verbal, and more than verbal, a...

Rufus Norris directed this Christopher Hampton play based on the 1782 French epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. Given its novelistic origin, the play was unsurprisingly tightly plotted. The dialogue was sharp, though at times it sounded too much like Wilde's English drawing room. Laura Linney played the chilling La Marquise de Merteuil, while Ben Daniels, as Le Vicomte de Valmont, was, perhaps, a too-sympathetic egotist. Jessica Collins was heartbreakingly convincing as La Presidente de Tourvel, whom Valmont seduces and abandons. The ensemble acting was without any weak link, the efficient set just sufficient to suggest luxurious decadence. We sat in the first row of the mezzanine in the American Airlines Theatre, and had an excellent view of the sexual machinations. The Headhunter's all-purpose five-point scale: ****1/2