Use someone just for sex simply because you can and then, with impunity, toss him or her away with the empty Veuve Clicquot bottles. It’s been said before, but let’s chime in: Christopher Hampton’s sophisticated stage adaptation of ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ – currently on stage in a crisp revival at Theatre Three – couldn’t be a more apt and sharp-edged entertainment for our #MeToo and Time’s Up moment.

Moment? Yes, one does hope this is more than a ‘moment,’ that some long-lasting changes might be made to the power imbalance between the sexes. But the persistent relevance of ‘Les Liaisons’ should give such hopes a serious pause.

When Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ original novel appeared in 1782, it was an explosive tell-all about the Parisian aristocracy romping and wrecking lives for sport. It also offered an indictment of the libertinism the Enlightenment had degenerated into. It was a kind of French frat house: Educated freethinking had somehow turned into just tricking women into bed and bragging about it. By 1985, when Hampton’s theatrical version premiered, first in London and then on Broadway two years later, the play was hailed for its satiric take on the purported selfishness and upper-class indulgence of the ’80s, the Age of Thatcher and Reagan.

Now it’s Harvey Weinstein’s turn in the pillory. ‘Les Liaisons’ is impossible to watch today without thinking of Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly, Charlie Rose and the other powerful males accused of sexual misconduct, using their positions to coerce victims into silence. Funny, how such a smart play just keeps dragging in the latest examples of masculinity, class privilege and vulnerability. Can a drama of salons and servants really feel so relevant? Consider what transpired at the Dallas Theater Center with former casting director Lee Trull being fired for ‘inappropriate behavior’ – which set off still-simmering resentments and questions over how it was handled and then how it was covered in the press. Now imagine if ‘Les Liaisons’ happened to be scheduled on the DTC ‘s season instead of Theatre Three’s.

A righteous and bitter explosion might have gone off in the local theater community.

Cindee Mayfield as the Marquise de Merteuil and Brandon Potter as the Vicomte de Valmont. Photo: Jeffrey Schmidt

The generally well-executed Theatre Three staging, directed by Tiffany Nichole Green, is not the first to be done in modern dress. The National Theatre presented its own revival two years ago with Dominic West (‘The Wire,’ ‘The Affair’).  The Vicomte de Valmont, the man at the center of the play, would seem to be just another Don Juan. But Valmont is not simply racking up high scores. He sets out to bed a famously religious, married woman just to prove he can. He’s confident he’s that charming, that disarmingly devious. For him, it’s the emotional challenge Madame de Tourvel presents that’ll burnish his reputation as a rake. Humiliating this straitlaced woman, exposing the stringent emptiness he sees at the heart of all religion or morality will give him that extra pleasure. She’ll enjoy herself erotically while tormenting herself morally.

There lies the difference between Valmont and Weinstein et al. Bill Cosby was convicted on three counts of drugging and then sexually assaulting women. Matt Lauer allegedly had his office turned into a medieval trap. Valmont certainly gets angry and ugly with the Marquise de Mertuiel, his former lover and now his rival in toying with people’s lives. But when it comes masculine power or privilege, it’s difficult to see him actually resorting to blunt force or getting a victim drugged or blind drunk.

That’s because Valmont – played by Brandon Potter at Theatre Three – is a seducer. He enjoys the game too much, especially with a good opponent. True, what he does with the innocent Cecile de Volanges (Samantha Behan) – another one of his targets along the way – would, by today’s standards, constitute statutory rape. It doesn’t matter that she enjoys herself with him. She’s underage, hardly a worthy opponent, as he protests. But the larger point is that even if she were fully mature, his seduction of her would still be perfectly callous. He’s doing it just to help his friend and former lover La Marquise revenge herself on Volanges’ fiance, a previous lover who’d spurned La Marquise.

The National Theatre 2016 revival of ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ starred Elaine Cassidy, Dominic West and Janet McTeer. Photo: National Theatre

There’s no doubt in ‘Les Liaisons’ that Valmont is an utterly cynical sexual predator. But being smart, rich, amusing and stylish – these do complicate the picture. It’s not that charm redeems a criminal – it increases his dramatic charge. We are often drawn to dangerous energy. There’s a reason John Milton made Lucifer the most appealing figure in ‘Paradise Lost.’

And what of La Marquise herself? She presents a complicating case of female equality, even superiority, when it comes to using and abusing people sexually. At the heart of ‘Les Liaisons’ is her speech defending her need to be even more devious, more ruthless, than the men she encounters – out of self-preservation. She’s an independent, attractive widow in a world where dynastic marriages with powerful men are the major engines of wealth and property. She has her aristocratic title, of course, but otherwise, she must follow her ironclad rules, using her wits, caution and charm – to remain independent, her own woman.

Charm, unfortunately, is something Potter doesn’t really convey as Valmont. What made the late Alan Rickman, who originated the role on stage, and John Malkovich, who starred in the 1988 film version, delightful was their feline narcissism. That playful self-awareness is key to Valmont’s appeal because through much of the first act, he’s play acting: He makes a show of being the attentive nephew, the altruistic nobleman, the doting lover, all to impress his target, de Tourvel. He seduces her – while seducing the audience as well. He mocks all this tiresome do-gooding with amusing asides. According to that other observer of French society, La Rochefoucauld, hypocrisy is the compliment vice pays to virtue – but here, even the compliment is a bit of smirking theater. Both Rickman and Malkovich let us see the ‘actor’ commenting on the acting, they let us enjoy the sardonic performance, the eye rolls and sighs. Potter’s delivery is flat and dry, his ironies about women and seduction often come across as muttered exasperation.

It’s when Le Vicomte’s relationship with de Tourvel (Lydia Mackay) turns out deeper, more moving than he planned that Potter becomes convincing. Direct expressions of emotion – hurt, anger, doubt – activate him, they suit him better, it seems, more than droll self-reflection. But such open emotions are what Valmont and La Marquise work so hard to hide. Potter has a habit of pivoting as if his head, neck and shoulders were a single unit, his arms and the rest of his body dangling from them like a marionette’s. He does this swivel to confront someone foursquare, feet planted, chin up. That and his rock-crusher voice make him formidable, propulsive, if not subtle. He doesn’t project weakness well, for instance, especially the broken spirit Valmont exposes in his final confession.

John Malkovich as Valmont in the 1988 film, ‘Dangerous Liaisons.’ Photo: imgur.com

The performer who truly enjoys all these games, all the delicate ironies that twist throughout ‘Les Liaisons’ is Cindee Mayfield‘s La Marquise. This is Mayfield’s richest role in years and she relishes all of it. She delivers La Marquise’s catty put-downs and her savage wisdom with slightly raised eyebrows, as if to say, ‘You were expecting something else – from me or from life?’  If anything, Mayfield starts out too imperious already. La Marquise needs to show us some smoulder, some warmth (more than Mayfield does, at any rate). It’s the character’s only weakness, this residual affection and admiration between her and Valmont. Sensing that amplifies our awareness of all that they end up losing when they go to war, the real heartbreak that motivates these battle-scarred bedroom veterans.

But that’s a small reservation; otherwise, this is Mayfield’s spotlit showcase, and she knows it.

Speaking of intricate twists, director Green does add a few unnecessary frills – like the white animal masks the actors don and doff during scene changes. It’s as if Green couldn’t just tell this brilliantly constructed play in a straightforward fashion. She felt a director’s job was to adorn the script, to add stuff, like visual metaphors – Valmont’s a goat, La Marquise a fox – metaphors that tell us nothing we don’t already know.

Brandon Potter, Lydia Mackay and Cindee Mayfield at Theatre Three. Photo: Jeffrey Schmidt

Other than that, Green’s production is admirably quick, clean and forceful, benefiting immensely from Inseung Park’s chilled-out set with its two-story, white spiral staircase on one end, like a giant spider’s web. The entire, chic-condo design is clear, sleek and open yet something of a maze at the same time.

Well, there’s your visual metaphor.

Hampton’s adaptation of de Laclos’ novel is brilliant because it simplifies but retains so much. ‘Les Liaisons’ is an epistolary novel with a great deal of correspondence (including secret letters) spread throughout a network of aristocratic friends, spies and servants. Onstage, reading the daily mail might seem a thoroughly undramatic action, yet Hampton cleverly keeps letters and letter-writing major agents in the play.

He also retains the essence of de Laclos’ view of this jaded world of salons and ruined reputations. For those who, in our #MeToo moment, find the idea repellent that sexual predators can be portrayed with any sympathy or style, there’s this to consider: Christopher Hampton has noted that karma truly does function in ‘Les Liaisons.’ In a 1988 interview, I asked him whether he  believed de Laclos’ moral universe operated the way it seems to here. He said, for him, the endings of both Le Vicomte and La Marquise are thoroughly satisfying,  thoroughly deserved.

Justice prevails.