Prithee, fair maid. Pray tell what in the name of blithering pilchards is thy Captain Poldark up to now?
As played by Aidan Turner the sexy Cornish mine owner who was last seen seven years ago in a hugely popular BBC adaptation of the Winston Graham novels.
Over five smash hit series and many unforgettable scenes involving topless scything, naked swims, syllabub tasting and crushing kitchen maids to his manly chest, Turner made his Poldark an irresistible blend of Rhett and Mr Rochester, with a dash of Darcy thrown in, too.
Everyone adored him – and no wonder! Under a handsome frown, under his Bible-black curls, under a tricorn hat, under a thunderous sky and under siege from delirious fans, Aidan gave good brood; a boulder of smoulder hewn straight from some deep fissure in the Cornish rock.
His Poldark became a sensation: his face on tea towels and coffee mugs, his poster on walls, his image recreated on key rings and calendars – and even in knitting patterns.
I am not ashamed to say I was one of those women who lovingly knitted and stuffed his little Poldark. Ours was a silent worship in wool, each darling curl crafted in plain and purl.
The actor went on to star in various film and TV roles, including playing a tempestuous television interviewer in the recent Disney+ series of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals. For the latter character he even grew a preposterous, Borat-style moustache, as if to sabotage his good looks and keep his panting fans at bay.
Lesley Manville and Aidan Turner star in Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the National Theatre, which Jan Moir went to see on Saturday night
No need! I think it is fair to say that our swashbuckling hero has never quite reached the lusty Poldarkian heights of hunkdom that made him famous – but is that about to change?
On Saturday night at the National Theatre in London, Aidan Turner was on stage for the first public performance of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the famous 18th-century French novel adapted by Christopher Hampton and first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1985.
In this revival, Turner stars as dastardly rake the Vicomte de Valmont opposite Lesley Manville as the Marquise de Merteuil. They play jaded French aristocrats who were once lovers but now use sex as a weapon to humiliate and dominate others.
From the opening scenes until curtain down three hours later, Turner does his best to seduce almost every woman in his path. He spends much of the play thrashing about on silk sheets, stalking around chateaux in shirts slashed to the waist and snogging various lovelies with merry abandon.
Quick, I thought halfway through the first act, pass the double-ply and fetch my trusty needles. For ye olde urge to knit is upon me once more.
Yet something is lacking in this particular pattern, a dropped stitch in time. And it is not just that the Vicomte speaks in Turner’s own native Dublin accent instead of a high society Vicomte’s posh tones.
It sounds odd. ‘Show a proper confidence in my ability,’ he barks at the Marquise at one point, sounding less a French aristo on the prowl and more like Bob Geldof berating some poor sod who pumped him the wrong fuel at a Dundalk petrol station.
In addition, 42-year-old Turner gave an interview to a Sunday newspaper at the weekend in which he bemoaned his previous status as a sex symbol and stated his wish to be taken seriously as an actor. ‘I’m not 25 any more. I won’t ever look like that again. And I’m not 30, holding a scythe in the field,’ he said.
‘I welcome it, really,’ he added, of reaching his 40s. ‘A lot of my career, my early career, was based on how I look. And for a long time that was frustrating. Like, “God, is this really all I’m being hired for?” ’
Aidan Turner as the sexy Cornish mine owner, Ross Poldark, in the BBC period drama. His Poldark was an irresistible blend of Rhett and Mr Rochester, with a dash of Darcy
The actor went on to star in various film and TV roles, including playing tempestuous television interviewer Declan O’Hara in recent Disney+ series Rivals
Oh, Aidan! The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks. After all, this is the man who walks on stage topless in the opening scenes of the second half of this play – still looking scythingly tremendous, if I’m allowed to say that without being arrested for sexually objectifying a sex object.
In testament to Turner’s – and Manville’s – pulling power, the play runs until June and is almost completely sold out, with only a smattering of single tickets available. But there will be a nationwide cinema release from June 25, giving filmgoers the opportunity to experience the former Captain Poldark reborn as an 18th-century love machine for themselves.
Prepare for our hero pressing maidens up against walls in his tight matador trousers and pinning them down on carpets when all else fails. He performs ghastly face-holding kisses whenever a virgin falls into his orbit and then feverishly burrows under their crinoline skirts like a wombat tunnelling for a nice turnip amid what the script calls ‘much mutual delirium’ on the ‘path of no return’. I didn’t know whether to gasp or guffaw.
Of course, Turner treads in the footsteps of the great seducers. In the original RSC production, the late Alan Rickman played the Vicomte in London and on Broadway wearing a frock coat, an evil smirk and wielding an unmatched, icy malice. John Malkovich brought a menacing feyness to the role in the 1988 film adaptation, while Dominic West played the Vicomte in the 2015-16 revival at the Donmar Warehouse in London.
Poor Dominic’s interpretation wasn’t an unqualified success, with some reviewers calling him a likeable libertine rather than a genuinely terrifying one. Booming, lusty and plummy were some of the kinder words used.
Indeed, I wonder if Turner’s return (he made an acclaimed debut in the West End in 2018 in The Lieutenant Of Inishmore) will meet with entirely positive critical approval, for sometimes he is about as dark and foreboding as a character in a Brian Rix farce. He’s got the garters, but has he got the guts?
Lesley Manville is a far more chilling prospect as the Marquise de Merteuil; all blood-red gowns and restrained fury as she declares war on her former paramour Valmont, a man who is partly redeemed – and then wholly destroyed – by love. ‘My victory wasn’t over her, it was over you,’ she seethes, in one heart-stopping moment.
And given that Manville is 70 years old, how thrilling that she and Turner play lovers and contemporaries in age, despite the 28-year-gap between them.
Significant age differences are not uncommon in Hollywood and the theatre, but it is usually the men who are 20 to 40 years older than their female counterparts.
Manville even appears onstage in stockings, suspenders and a basque, looking fabulous. Even more remarkable when one considers that she appeared in that very first RSC production as the naive Cecile de Volanges, a character cruelly seduced by the Vicomte at the request of the Marquise as part of their clammy game of revenge. Aren’t the French just exhausting?
You might wonder what is the point of reviving the infamous 1782 epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, given the strictures of intimacy coordinators and the difficulties in showing a sexual predator at work in this post-Epstein world.
However, surely it underlines that the perils of committing to paper in the 18th century are just the same as committing to email in the 21st century.
Finally, there was much speculation about whether Turner’s Borat moustache would stay for Les Liaisons and, if it did, would it want a saucer of milk and some kibble at the interval?
‘I thought he was an Iranian taxi driver,’ said puzzled socialite Nicky Haslam, who met the whiskered star at a party recently.
On Saturday night, however, I can report with delight that the moustache has gone, although by the end of this long, long evening at the theatre I was beginning to wonder if it was growing back again. Mine certainly was.
This production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses has its thrills. There is some lovely choreography throughout and as a former Irish ballroom dancing champion, Turner excels in these scenes.
Yet as a nobleman of the French court he is called upon to bow a lot and is oddly terrible at this; instead of a noble sweep he just folds over like a prawn having a heart attack.
Lawks, Miss Demelza! What on earth would Poldark say?
