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This is not your daddy’s theater.
Bondage, dominance, submission and sadomasochism are the top layer of David Ives’ “Venus in Fur,” presented at the Aux Dog Theatre.
But the play is wittier than that. Power, gender, identity and even a little Greek-style hubris get thrown on the table and filleted into a titillating intercourse.
Ives has been around for awhile, but “Venus in Fur” is a new work, first performed in 2010.
Structurally, the play is downright clever. A play within a play is put to excellent use, and the levels of reality and truth will keep you engaged and guessing right to the end. The best part about the ending is that it has a hell of a payoff.
There is some downright, all-out, sexy madness in this production, but it is by no means exploitative or excessive. There isn’t pointless humping or titty waving. It gets under your skin and sticks with you when you leave.
“Venus in Fur” is a two-person show with one man, Brennan Foster, and one woman, Sheridan Johnson. The script asks for a lot from the actors, and their undertaking and commitment is brave.
There’s not much to the set, beyond the strange gray color to everything and a psychoanalysis couch used for a subtle joke. With no intermission and both actors constantly onstage, it is the actors’ performances that bring the production front, center and screaming into the audience.
Johnson is hilarious. The script is clever and has many fine jokes, but Johnson sells them so well and so often. She also happens to be animatedly dashing around the stage in sexual and remarkably revealing attire for most of the play. Sometimes this is for the sake of humor, but other times Johnson exudes sex and power. She is terrifying, arousing and completely engrossing.
Foster becomes as emotionally exposed as Johnson is physically exposed. It’s a bit horrifying to see him figuratively sliced open and turned inside out. His performance is honest and brutal, taking him to deep and dark places. Foster makes it a damn fine show.
“Venus in Fur” succeeds at the ultimate goal of theater: It will make you forget you’re watching a play.
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To call “Venus in Fur” something as asinine as a battle of sexes does not do the script justice. There’s a lot more at stake within the narrative.
It is feminist in the best sorts of ways, and although its surface presentation of “sex as a play thing” seems to fall in line with the BDSM theme, in actualization it is much more than that. Sexual identity is serviced nicely for an audience willing to consider its tantalizing presentation.
The fluidity of role and gender might be disturbing to some, but this is the cleverness of the kink. The initial sadomasochism is only the most basic subversion the play addresses. Gender roles are physically removed and examined closely while being prodded around and coerced into movement. It’s claustrophobic like a petri dish, but expansive too, allowing for the audience to be pulled in.
Although this is not your daddy’s theater, it probably wouldn’t mind if you called it “daddy.”
