There’s nothing random, of course, about the lovely Laura Linney. She more than held her own opposite Liam Neeson in 2002’s The Crucible, and was luminous in the HBO miniseries John Adams. The sturdy performer excels at characters who are virtuous, self-sacrificing, plucky stiff-upper-lip types. Accordingly, as the ancien régime schemer Marquise de Merteuil (played by Glenn Close in the 1988 film version) Linney exudes far too motherly an aura to be convincing as a brittle conniver. The apple-cheeked actor wraps herself in a frosty hauteur that faintly implies bitter depths, and she carves out moments of dignity (you could argue that the Marquise is a protofeminist), but mainly you wait in vain for her to tap into the character’s rage and viciousness.

Playing her duplicitous partner in crime, Ben Daniels (of BBC fame, apparently) is suitably cocky and sadistic as the Vicomte de Valmont, but he still comes across as a lightweight, petulant dandy. Strutting and posing with his legs ever akimbo (perhaps he has been instructed to act with his crotch), Daniels is too transparently sleazy to succeed in corrupting the pious Présidente de Tourvel (Jessica Collins, whose bland looks and simpering delivery make the chase utterly zestless). For her own revenge plans, the Marquise sexually bribes Valmont into ruining the young Cécile (Mamie Gummer), an innocent child who’s meant to return to the convent she recently left after learning the wicked ways of the world. Sex, backstabbing, gossip—such juicy material ought to play itself, but the chemistry between Linney and Daniels is stiff and sparkless. When these two plot and sling saucy badinage, it’s about as nasty as two Radio Shack regional managers weighing DVR displays.

Such chilliness is only amplified by Rufus Norris’s wanna-be chic but vapid staging, which is glassy, metallic and cold-blooded. The set by Scott Pask is oppressively morose, a cheap-looking wall of dark mirrored panels framed by heavy drapery that looks stylish—by the standards of the 1980s, not the 1780s. By dividing scenes with actors singing excerpts from baroque opera and cantata, Norris only underscores the middlebrow nature of the material. This is not opera, it’s a trashy Harlequin romance tricked out with well-turned epigrams. It’s true, Hampton’s script—adapted from the 1782 French epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos—is witty and literate, but ultimately it plays like imitation Molière and Oscar Wilde, with a dash of George Bernard Shaw–style social criticism thrown in.

It’s frankly surprising to see the Roundabout giving Norris a job, after his equally miscast and befuddling American production of Festen last season. As in that failed undertaking, the director tries to evoke a dreamy, haunted world, with echoey sound effects and lots of moody, dim lighting. The approach just doesn’t fit this material, which needs to burst with life and light, as Stephen Frears understood in his film version. By heaping on the scenographic dreariness, Norris simply underscores what we already know: This is a corrupt, nasty world on the edge of a peasant revolution.

Luckily, some of the supporting cast members dispel the gloom and pretension. Gummer makes a notable Broadway debut as Cécile, injecting welcome comedy into the proceedings. Likewise stalwart zany Kristine Nielsen, playing Cécile’s status-concerned mother, lets rip with her trademark bugging eyes and freaked-out double takes. Sadly, though, the laughs, like the titillations, are too few.