At the start of the National Theatre’s classy new production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a febrile tale of seducers and schemers in the high society France of the late 18th century, Lesley Manville stands in stately grandeur in a red silk, sequined, fitted gown and an embroidered mask, dressed ready for a ball.
She takes in the 1,000 spectators in the National’s stately Lyttelton auditorium and we watch her, thrilled that we are about to spend the next three hours in the company, “breathing the same air” as someone once put it to me, of one of the country’s finest actors.
Oh, and Aidan Turner’s about to come on too, to spar with Manville in a series of intimate scenes a deux. This sort of moment of heightened anticipation is what makes theatre so uniquely precious, for those on both sides of the curtain.
It is certainly an experience that film and television cannot hope to replicate – and this is why the biggest names in the acting world continue to return to the stage time after time, to prove their skills in the fearsome, thrilling crucible of live performance. This, after all, is “proper” acting, with a pounding heart: there are no retakes here for fluffed lines or missed marks, no pauses to readjust the angle of the camera or the lighting. Instead, the show starts and the show, as everyone in the theatre world knows, must go on.
And on Les Liaisons goes, until the final scene finds Manville’s character, the Marquise de Merteuil, as a tricked and chastened figure but one still exquisitely keeping up appearances in an ivory satin, diamond-encrusted gown.
Lesley Manville was nominated for an Oscar for her role in 2017’s Phantom Thread (Photo: Sarah M Lee)The action ends – and that is when the applause starts, segueing into a standing ovation if the actors are lucky. Imagine the thrill of hearing that thundering applause for your work night after night and leaving the stage buzzing on the high of having succeeded once again. Nothing in the world of screen arts can hope to offer anything like that same visceral immediacy of appreciation, no matter how warm the reviews and reception might ultimately turn out to be.
Let’s not forget that when filming ends – and very often narratives are shot non-chronologically, meaning that the ending might come on day two and the start some weeks after – the show needs to spend months in an editing suite. This adds another layer of filtering over which actors have no control, whereas in theatre they are in total charge. The director will have guided them through weeks of rehearsals, but once they are out on stage, it is all about them and the audience.
The bigger budgets of film and television mean that they can pay better than theatre, which is why actors lucky enough to have a choice tend to juggle all three. Turner, who shot to fame as the BBC’s Poldark, will return to the small screen next month in the second series of Apple TV’s Jilly Cooper bonkbuster, Rivals. Manville’s career went up a significant notch after her 2018 Oscar nomination for Phantom Thread and she most recently starred in an exquisite mood piece of a film, Midwinter Break.
Yet, until 6 June, the pair will be turning up (almost) daily to prove themselves night after night on the South Bank, engaging in some elaborate scenes of dance and, in Turner’s case, fighting. They will be living on their nerves and wits – and those who are lucky enough to have a ticket to the show will relish it.
‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ is at the National Theatre until 6 June (nationaltheatre.org.uk)
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