If you’re heading out toward the Berkshires and haven’t yet made plans for Valentine’s Day, consider taking your significant other to brunch at Shakespeare & Company for a five-course meal before the matinee.

By Helen Epstein

Josh Aaron McCabe and Elizabeth Aspenlieder of Shakespeare and Company

Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Christopher Hampton. Adapted from the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. Directed by Tina Packer.
Presented by Shakespeare & Company at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, Lenox, MA, through March 21.

Tina Packer has directed the Hampton play based on the epistolary novel of France’s ancien régime by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, said to have been a favorite of Marie Antoinette. Sexual seductions, abuses of power by court and church, obfuscations of truth, paper trails, corsets, fans, and hankies are all part of this costume drama that has been adapted for film and opera as well as for the stage. Shakespeare & Company’s versatile and much-loved Elizabeth Aspenlieder stars as La Marquise de Merteuil opposite Josh Aaron McCabe as Le Vicomte de Valmont.

Helen Epstein is the author of the memoirs Children of the Holocaust and Where She Came From.