Venus in Fur – clever and complicated, and subtly confronting.
What’s not to love from this recent rendition of Venus in Fur from the Orange Theatre Company? Directed by Lora Mander and performed by the talented and tempting Sairah Erens as Vanda Jordan and Eli Thorne as Thomas Novachek, you are in for a night to remember with David Ives’s play.
It is a clever and complicated, and subtly confronting, well-written piece of theatre. No wonder it won the Tony Award for Best Play. Described as, “Seriously smart and electrifying”, I was curious how this stage piece – based on a provocative plot – would deal sensitively and timely with topics like submission, power and gender.
Playwright-director Thomas Novachek is evidently frustrated: the show opens with him debriefing his fiancé over the phone – a diatribe describing a run of awful auditions. Slightly tongue in cheek, lightning flashing, actress Vanda Jordan nonchalantly arrives on the scene. Vanda, clobbered in the wrong clothes, talking in the wrong tongues, is seemingly unsuited for the role. Having ‘flicked through the script’ on the way there, delayed by an uninvited sexual advance, it is revealed that she knows a lot more than she initially lets on. Paradoxically, the director, Thomas, perturbed and paralyzed by her forewarned and forewarned attack, falls into her rhythm of staging a dress rehearsal, costumes and all.
When the gazes of the two characters meet, a mutual game of cat and mouse begins, leading from disinterest, through to fascination, to complete submission of one by the other… and then the other… before the audience’s eyes, a transformation takes place: the bodacious femme fatale character – Vanda – becomes, with uncanny precision, the part she plays. This motif of the female form, presented in contemporary culture, is treated here with dynamism and often comedy. The lines between reality and fiction blur as the actors delve deeper into the script; there are fantastic levels of tension between the characters and in their virtuoso acting.
The premier show benefitted from a short Q&A afterwards. Through this, my pondering about the meta-theatrical level emerged stronger: suggestions that the stage performance is more than just a study of female nature, it is a dark work, wondering about creation and creator in a broader sense: director, writer, playwright, actor.
The actors were able to share that they, through the rehearsals process (between work and family), had played with the push and pull and definition between the characters. As such, each performance is unique as they try to: “use our instinct and energy.” In rehearsals, they “made this a safe and open space… our goal was to push it to see where it could go… to be in the moment.” There is discomfort in some of the submission scenes – it’s visceral – the actors felt it to. The real question though is how do you feel about it and what does this tell you about yourself? Rose Fawbert Mills 13th December 2024
Photo by Brett Florens
Venus in Fur a compelling female portrait is directed by Lora Mander, with Eli Thorne as Thomas Novacheck, and Sairah Erens as Vanda Jordan. It is running from 12th-14th December and again from 13th to 15th February 2025 at the new KIT LIVE venue on Linnaeusstraat, tucked behind the TROPEN museum, near Oosterpark.
