SEDUCTIVE POWERS PASADENA PLAYHOUSE FULL OF 'CRUEL INTENTIONS'.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Writer

It's a dangereuse world we're living in, whether the time is 18th-century France or present-day L.A.

So says actress Lynnda Ferguson, who bristles at the suggestion that the Marquise de Merteuil - the character she plays in the Pasadena Playhouse production of ``Les Liaisons Dangereuses'' opening Sunday - is the nastiest barracuda in a shark-infested ocean.

``She was a woman living in the 18th century and in a world run by men. She's a smart, bright and strong woman,'' says Ferguson, the Sherman Oaks-based stage actress. ``What would Hillary Clinton have done in those days? Figure out a way to survive.''

That's Merteuil all right, the scheming aristocrat playing deadly games with her former lover the Vicomte de Valmont in ``Les Liaisons Dangereuses.'' The novel by Chordelos de Laclos was adapted into a play by Christopher Hampton and into several films. Cinematic Merteuils have included Jeanne Moreau (in the 1959 version of ``Les Liaisons Dangereuses'') Glenn Close (``Dangerous Liaisons''), Annette Bening (``Valmont''), and, most recently, Sarah Michelle Gellar (``Cruel Intentions'').

The wager spins on Valmont's ability to seduce a convent girl and a morally upstanding married woman as a way of exacting revenge against another of Merteuil's former lovers. If he succeeds, he wins back Merteuil.

Rules of the game? All is fair in love and war, including forms of viciousness and cruelty. Once the victim of similar game playing, Merteuil is now turning the tables, using the position of power she has attained to get revenge. Her justification comes in feminist terms: I play the game under nobody's rules but my own.

Valmont (played by James Sutorius) is no less despicable, but because he undergoes something of a transformation, he tends to arouse less of the audience's fury than his counterpart. As viewers, we can't always watch ... nor can we turn away.

``I'm just fascinated about getting to the roots of that psychological behavior that would cause a pair - in this case Valmont and Merteuil, to entertain themselves by basically destroying other lives,'' says Sheldon Epps, the Playhouse's artistic director and the director of this production.

``In fact, I think the truth of their situation is that they really do love each other and are made for each other in the most classical sense.''

Both Laclos and Hampton have highlighted the coming of the French Revolution, the signal that the machinations of bored members of the aristocracy will fall away as soon as ``madame la guillotine'' starts falling.

But Ferguson believes the play has a contemporary resonance as well.

``It's not any more shocking than what goes on all the time, when sexuality and a lot of money are used as tools,'' she said, adding with a laugh, ``hell, I'm using it today.

``I have every instinct of Merteuil in me. I fully acknowledge that. Everybody wants to shoot someone on the freeway or get revenge on the person who has screwed us over. That's why the theater is so wonderful. As an actress, I get to act it out and experience so it doesn't drive me crazy in the real world.''

Epps, who has directed several darker-edged love stories from Shakespeare's ``All's Well That Ends Well'' to Tom Stoppard's ``The Real Thing,'' had ``Les Liaisons'' on his ``plays to direct'' docket since directing a Hampton translation of Ibsen's ``Hedda Gabler'' several years ago in San Diego.

He has never seen the play - not the famous Royal Shakespeare Company version that came to Broadway in 1986 nor the production at the Ahmanson Theater two years later featuring Lynn Redgrave, Fank Langella and Kathleen Quinlan.

``I fell in love with the language, the characters and the richness of the story,'' said Epps. ``Just getting an actor to wrap his tongue around some very sophisticated sentences that Hampton writes is tough. Another image I've used is the chess game. Everybody is calculating their next move based on the last move that was made.''

``LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES''

Where: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 5 and 9 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday; through April 22. Opens Sunday.

Tickets: $15 to $42.50. Call [phone].

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Photo:

Sheldon Epps, right, directs Monette Magrath, left, Lynnda Ferguson and James Sutorius in the Pasadena Playhouse production of ``Les Liaisons Dangereuses.''