NEW YORK - Maliciousness is in full flower at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre, where the Roundabout Theatre Company's stylish revival of Christopher Hampton's delightfully decadent "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is on display.

Hampton's take-no-prisoners battle of the sexes - based on the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - has been given an enormously entertaining production by Rufus Norris. The director has chosen well in casting the generals who command each side in this war that never ends. And although they may be opposing forces, these leaders of 18th-century French aristocracy are often in cahoots in their plotting of destruction for destruction's sake, the sheer joy of ruination. Power trumps everything.

On one side, we have Le Vicomte de Valmont, portrayed with swaggering narcissism by Ben Daniels. As another character in the play says of Valmont, he "never opens his mouth without first calculating what damage he can do," and the serpentine Daniels makes the man's determination to do evil fascinating to watch.

Valmont is matched by La Marquise de Merteuil, played by the excellent Laura Linney with a pursed-lip disdain that creeps out from behind an icy politeness. Manners are important to these folks; morals are not.

"Les Liaisons Dangereuses" was seen on Broadway in 1987 in a production from England's Royal Shakespeare Company, and then there was a movie version the following year with Glenn Close and John Malkovich. In the two decades since then, interest in sexual excess, particularly by celebrities, has become more pervasive or, at least, more public. Now we have the Internet. Back in 18th-century France, it was primarily gossip over dinner or at the card table. But prurient curiosity was there, too.

Valmont's intended conquests include Cecile, a virginal 15-year-old just out of convent school and ripe for the plucking, if only to embarrass her stuffy, moralistic mother. An even bigger prize is Madame Tourvel, a genuinely upstanding woman who's even in love with her own husband. That makes her all the more desirable, according to Valmont. "I want the excitement of watching her betray everything that's most important to her," he salivates.

But Hampton doesn't let his villains off easy. For Valmont, that means one of the worst things that could happen - he falls in love with his prey. And Merteuil, too, gets her comeuppance, even as she uses her considerable wiles to get what she wants - and more.

The playwright's language is almost classical in nature, and the performers handle it well. Daniels, a British actor making his Broadway debut, revels in the epigrammatic dialogue. So does Linney, particularly in Merteuil's tart observations about the role of women in a sexist society.

Mamie Gummer is a sweetly naive Cecile, a young woman who quickly adapts to a more carnal lifestyle. As her equally inexperienced young admirer, Benjamin Walker exudes an earnestness that, of course, attracts the attention of the predatory Merteuil. Jessica Collins as Tourvel has a harder time of it. But then, she has to portray a "good" person, and virtuous is not easy to play.

Other supporting cast members include such distinct personalities as Sian Phillips as Valmont's disapproving aunt and Kristine Nielsen as Cecile's dithering mother.

One of the pleasures of the original production was Bob Crowley's lush setting, sort of an all-purpose boudoir with acres of curtains swirling across the stage and even out into the theatre itself. Scott Pask's Roundabout is nowhere near as extravagant, but it is effective, nonetheless. Pask makes do with a large drapery that covers, but doesn't completely hide, much of the evening's erotic activity.

Don't look for any romance, though. It's not a commodity prominently on display in "Les Liaisons Dangereuses." As Merteuil remarks before the start of all the sexual shenanigans: "Love is something you use, not something you fall into."

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