Baudelaire, no stranger to scandal, was a huge fan of the novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” “If this book burns,” he said of Choderlos de Laclos’s epistolary pulse-racer of 1782, “it burns as only ice can burn.”

This sinuous tale of libertinism and sexual gamesmanship in late-18th-century France is certainly capable of raising one’s body temperature a few notches, and the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of Christopher Hampton’s acclaimed 1985 adaptation continues the ornately decadent trend. But the most enticing, and ultimately the most limiting, feature of Rufus Norris’s resplendent if psychologically glib production pertains to the second half of that quote. In what amounts to an onstage blood transfusion, the fetching veins of Laura Linney — a candidate for America’s sweetheart, at least among a bookish subset of America — contain pure ice water.

Now, it is possible to overstate the nicey-nicey quality of Ms. Linney’s previous work. Films as dissimilar as “The Truman Show,” “Mystic River,” and, most effectively, “The Savages” have sought out layers of duplicity underneath her fresh-scrubbed veneer. And while her recent stage roles have been of the long-suffering variety (“The Crucible,” “Hedda Gabler”), her first big splash came as a conniving interviewer in 1992’s “Sight Unseen.” Tellingly, she was recast as the more sympathetic female lead when the play came to Broadway 12 years later, largely on the strength of her increased exposure during that time.

Nonetheless, the gap between some of these charmingly imperfect heroines and the sadistic Marquise de Merteuil, who treats confidantes and paramours like so many ants under a baroque magnifying glass, is an enormous one. The amoral roundelay that de Laclos created and Mr. Hampton refurbished culminates in the death of two people and the ruination of several others — and the Marquise’s fingerprints can be found on every single twist, turn, and tumble. (This being 1780s Paris, the surviving members of the ancien régime are unlikely to be alive much longer, a fact that Messrs. Hampton and Norris each overemphasize slightly.)

But the torrid proceedings between her and her co-conspirator and former lover, the similarly dastardly Vicomte de Valmont (Ben Daniels), prove oddly passionless in this (ahem) mounting. The two exchange cynical witticisms about the vicissitudes of love and power with the expertly phrased vitriol that one remembers from past incarnations, including the acclaimed 1988 film, but that’s where the connection stops. It’s as if Ms. Linney worked so hard to squelch her innate warmth, with the British import Mr. Daniels following suit, that the brittle badinage and machinations are all that remain.

What begins as a fairly simple quest for revenge — Valmont hopes to wreck a rival’s engagement by seducing his fiancée, a 15-year-old fresh out of the convent named Cécile (Mamie Gummer) — quickly engulfs some half dozen sexual combatants. Also involved are Valmont’s dowager aunt, the seen-it-all Madame de Rosemonde (Siân Phillips); his sexual side project, Madame de Tourvel (a touching Jessica Collins); Danceny (Benjamin Walker), an earnest young chevalier in love with the temporarily chaste Cécile, and any number of beddable and dispensable servants. Should Valmont prove successful at leading Tourvel astray, the Marquise agrees to reward him with a return engagement in her bedchamber. (Set designer Scott Pask has flooded the stage with thick drapes that often fill in as rumpled bedding.)

None of these characters ever meet in the original novel, which is constructed entirely via letters. Mr. Hampton’s primary gift is in intertwining these men and women through a series of bristling verbal and sexual encounters, with particular attention paid to the skirmishes between Valmont and Merteuil. “I was born to dominate your sex and avenge my own,” she tells him in a summation of her code of dishonor, but Valmont’s burgeoning attraction to Tourvel poses a dire threat to both of their heretofore heartless intrigues. She can’t tell how much of his pursuit is a put-on and how much is real, and finally neither can he. It is this uncertainty that spurs the pair into outright combat.

That’s the idea, at least. But Mr. Norris — who has outfitted the stage with a marvelous collection of aristocratic finery (designed by Katrina Lindsay) and a wall of mirrors perfect for the characters’ self-satisfied examination of said outfits — emphasizes the endless connivings between this pair to the exclusion of any of the rawer, less epigrammatic emotions that accompany Valmont’s ostensible upheaval. These two have become so numbed to the possibility of actual romantic love that their increasingly fraught rendezvous are reduced to mere pique. No matter how alluring Mr. Daniels’s cocktail of preening vanity and disingenuous sensitivity becomes, this unwillingness to honor at least the possibility of emotional transcendence robs this “Liaisons” of a crucial layer of humanity.

Setting a gifted comic actress like Kristine Nielsen loose in the role of Cécile’s disapproving mother shows an inclination toward glibness on Mr. Norris’s part, an inclination that is confirmed by the frequent eye-rollings and smirks behind the backs of unwitting victims. (This tone becomes particularly uncomfortable during Valmont’s nonchalant rape of a minor, a scene that Ms. Gummer handles with the tact and intelligence that are quickly becoming her hallmark.) And his staging drastically ups the ante in terms of sexuality: The memorable scene in which Valmont uses one conquest’s naked back as a makeshift desk to write another woman a love letter is now far more explicit, and Valmont and Merteuil can barely keep their hands off each other, at least in the early scenes.

Thanks to Ms. Linney’s poise and emotional clarity and to Mr. Daniels’s vulpine self-awareness, it is apparent throughout “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” that these two know just what they’re doing with each seemingly absentminded caress. But too much knowledge, particularly of the carnal variety, and not enough of its accompanying disorientation — too much ice and not enough warmth — eventually proves numbing.

Until July 6 (227 W. 42nd St., between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, 212-719-1300).