Venus in Fur is not quite based on the (in)famous novel with the same title. Not quite. It rather centers around a playwright/director named Thomas Novachek (director Mark Blanchard in the performance I saw) looking for the lead of his adaptation of the novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (from whom we get the word "masochism"). He's in a degree of despair after a long day of auditions when Vanda Jordan (KATYUSHA) walks in, insisting she has traveled far via bus, in the rain, faced a whole series of challenges to get here, quite late. He does not want to endure another audition. She insists. He refuses. She insists. He refuses again. She keeps insisting, and finally gets her way.
They act out the first scene of the play-within-a-play. And he is astounded. Every bit of who she had seemed evaporates in favor of this elegant, simmering, seductive woman from another age, one with a voice full of vague promises and eyes that pierce.
So far, so good. In fact, the set up is pretty much excellent. And more, I felt increasingly impressed with both actors' performances as well as the script by David Ives, which does not seek to simply retell the novel, but takes the premise to explore if not the novel at least how we often treat the subject matter. The cat-and-mouse (or sometimes cat-and-she wolf) game played between director and actress is at its best very compelling. She catches him out on a lot, not least the inherent sexism of the story (not, I think, the same as misogyny--it is more complex than that) and how others see it. He reveal along the way not-quite-the-full truth of why he has adapted this novel of all things.
Also along the way we find Vanda shows some frankly unbelievable knowledge, having somehow gotten hold of the script and memorized it, and also committed chunks of the novel to memory as well. She brought a bag of costumes, only some of which are for herself. The others are for Thomas, as he enacts first the novel's male central character, and eventually finds himself playing the female role after she switches from dominatrix to total submissive when "her" man finally gets up the courage to threaten to kill her.
It makes for quite a mind-blowing experience, bleeding into mythology as well as the depths of psychological truths. All of which is my jam in so many ways.
Let me make a few points, though. The ending has problems. It doesn't quite work once we arrive at the final three minutes or so. Part of that was a sound system that simply did not convey the words the voices recorded were saying! More, the very end of the play did not feel like an end, but a stop. The audience didn't even know whether to applaud or not.
Those are a bit subtle, and in terms of that last might well have been an aspect due to the early performance (this happens, often unpredictably in live theatre). More importantly, I don't want that criticism--which is real--about the end to take away from the journey, which was well-done and dove into some really interesting, kinky, and startlingly topical truths.
For the record, the show is ninety minutes long with no intermission. Such information was not in the program, unfortunately.
Venus in Fur plays through September 3, 2023, Fridays & Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 3pm at the McCadden Place Theatre – 1157 N. McCadden Place, Los Angeles. CA. 90038
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