AFTER The Three Musketeers of the summer, the Theatre Royal takes the Eurostar to France once more, this time returning with Christopher Hampton's racy costume drama Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

The year is 1780 or thereabouts, and decadent French society is as randy as it is dandy: when bored of card games and the opera what better way to pass the night and day than in sexual war games?

The reigning champions of bedroom chess are two experienced libertines who gain pleasure from destruction through seduction in their own version of the slaughter of the innocents. Le Vicomte de Valmont (Gareth Tudor Price), magnetic, maddening man of purple-prose letters, and elegant ice queen la Marquise de Merteuil (Suzy Cooper) are at it again, planning more exquisite executions of the heart, soul and body.

He wears black, she wears red - how devilish - as he goes hunting his late conquest in the field of love and revenge, while she indulges in her favourite pastime of inflicting cruelty.

Amusing himself with the teenage deflowering of convent girl Cecile Volanges (Abby Ford, well worth a second look), Valmont's prize target is the pure and devout la Presidente de Tourvel (Nicola Barber, a young but classical actress of the old school and a Felicity Kendal in the making).

More like cats playing with mice than spiders spinning webs for fly catching, Valmont and the Marquise take a lingering delight in their deceitful flirt-and-hurt work, and the three-hour running time - in particular the 95-minute first half to Damien Cruden and Lucy Pitman-Wallace's co-production - certainly maximises that lingering.

Matters begin to drag, despite the efficiency of scene changes conducted by discreet footmen, each time accompanied by the shadow of a hand writing a letter across the crescent-shaped back wall of Dawn Allsopp's set design.

By the end, the focus has blurred, the game playing grown weary, but there is more heart to this production than previous incarnations of Les Liaisons. Tudor Price's languid, serpentine, pony-tailed Valmont reveals a usually suppressed humanity to go with the sauce and the sorcery; Cooper's chilled Marquise is like the finest bone china, one tantalising step from breaking.

The verdict: better than The Three Musketeers but not as good as A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Please note: This play is not suitable for children; there are scenes of an adult nature.

Box office: 01904 623568.