Goodman’s Venus in Furs Dabbles in Brilliance

                       Love for the theater is all about intimacy. You can even say that about the most extravagant musical. For mega productions like the Wiz or even Kinky Boots, it’s an intimacy brought on by proximity. The magic is live. It’s tangible. Real. And if the story is especially strong, the audience is left a little changed as well as thrilled.

All of the above is amped up when this sense of intimacy and alteration can be pulled off with just two people on a stage talking to each other. We forget that through this simple act people enter on the road to marriage and nations enter wars.

Venus in Furs demonstrates the full power of live theater. Two people simply talk to each other and somehow there are suddenly high stakes, danger, confusion; and in this play, reversals, domination, submission, and sexual intrigue.

Thomas (Rufus Collins), a playwright, is at the end of a day spent auditioning actors for the female lead in his newest work. On the phone, he laments he may never find someone who can carry the intelligence or possess the gravitas to pull it off. An actress sweeps in from the street minutes before he’s about to roll.   He’s got dinner plans; seems anxious. He and the actress, Vanda, magnificently played by Amanda Drinkall, go back and forth on the meaning of the play and how it should be approached. She’s in camouflage mode; not yet disclosing her thorough and deep understanding of the work. That comes later. They dance through a verbal wrestling match before she finally convinces him to let her read for the part. It’s not long before you begin to see she’s much less naïve than she initially appears and understands the play she’s auditioning for far better than she earlier suggests. Soon she begins to take over what’s becoming a match of wills. One that is thick with sexual overtones; skewed clearly to the sadomasochistic.

Conflict conducted in the landscape of the mind can be just as intriguing as conflict waged on a battlefield. What’s better suited to warfare than the game of seduction?

As Vanda sheds her façade of false ignorance, she also transforms physically. Gone are the vestiges of turn of the century prudishness in keeping with the play she was originally auditioning set in the turn of the century. The high collar and long skirt vanish and suddenly the butterfly emerges as a full out dominatrix; wielding a tongue as finely crafted as a very elegant whip.

To see such a topic handled with high wit and like intelligence made it a joy to watch. In the wrong hands, the impact of this wonderful play would be noticeably diminished. Fortunately, David Ives’ brilliant story of a play for power between the sexes rests in thoroughly competent hands with Drinkall and Collins.