Venus in Fur Review: Nina Arianda Dominates, Titillates

The story at the heart of “Venus in Fur” fascinates Americans above almost any other. I don’t mean the sadomasochistic power struggle between a 19th century European nobleman and his dominatrix, or even the shifting mano a mano between the actress and the playwright-director for whom she is auditioning to play the part of the dominatrix. That’s just the plot.
The more winning story is how Nina Arianda, the New Jersey-born, Ukrainian-speaking daughter of immigrants, a recent acting school graduate with a very thin resume, suddenly at age 25 became a star. That was at the beginning of last year, when she appeared in “Venus in Fur” at the Classic Stage Company Off-Broadway. Reaction was more or less favorable to the two-character play by David Ives, but people were blown away by her performance —
“remarkable,” “astonishing,” “sensational,” “multilayered” (that said multiple times), a “major talent” she was called, the rare find of a performer with great comic timing but also deep acting chops. She was compared to Meryl Streep, Barbra Streisand, Tracey Ullman, Judy Holiday. This last was prophetic, since Arianda was subsequently propelled onto Broadway last season playing the part that made Judy Holiday famous, the dumb blonde of “Born Yesterday.” Reaction was mixed to that revival, but not to her performance.
She has since had small roles in “The Good Wife” on TV and Woody Allen’s movie “Midnight in Paris,” and now, at 27, Arianda is back in “Venus in Fur,” this time on Broadway. She is just as good as she was. Her co-star Hugh Dancy is better than the actor he replaced, hard-charging when on the offense, mesmerizing in his submission, persuasive as a European because he is one. A few things about the play, though, have been lost in the transfer.
Arianda plays Vanda, a ditzy actress from an outer borough who arrives amidst thunder and lightning late to an audition. Only the playwright-director, Thomas (Dancy) is still in the office where the auditions had taken place all day. The play-within-the-play for which she is auditioning is Thomas’s adaptation of an 1870 novel, “Venus in Furs” by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. This is an actual novel that (as Thomas tells Vanda) inspired the creation of the word “masochist” based on the novelist’s name (Nobody explains why the coinage wasn’t sacherist, although that does sound like somebody who has a fetish for sweeteners.)
Thomas wants to go home, but Vanda is persuasive. It does seem in the cards: Her name is the same as the character’s. And she has come prepared; her bag contains a 19th-century dress, and various other relevant items, including a silver-studded dog-collar. She strips down to a sexy black bustier and boots. She has read the script – Thomas is baffled that she got a hold of the whole thing — and, as it turns out, she has read the novel as well.
“Basically it’s S&M porn,” she says.
“ ‘Venus in Fur’ is a serious novel,” Thomas huffs. “It’s a great love story.”

Eventually, Thomas agrees to her auditioning. He reads the nobleman’s part to her 19th century Vanda, and suddenly, she is transformed – accent, carriage, outlook – into the Vanda of the play-within-the-play. Betty Boop has become Uta Hagen. Then she changes right back.
It is the beginning of a pleasurable, often humorous, sometimes harrowing series of switches and shifts. The characters shift centuries, shift identities, shift power positions. The fewer twists and turns you know about, the more entertaining they are.
That is a problem for those of us who have seen this play already, admittedly a small number – although the production at CSC was extended a couple of times and broke the theater’s record for longest-running play. The play largely works as a script because of those twists. I am not someone who sees Ives offering special insight into relationships between the sexes, or power dynamics in general, or sexism in the theater, or, you know, anything. “Venus in Fur” is a fun, dizzy and hazy maze.
Even those who have not seen “Venus in Fur” before, though, will likely grow tired of the twists, which become repetitive and a bit confusing as the end nears; the one at the very end is especially disappointing.
Part of the thrill of the Off-Broadway production was the intimacy of it in the 180-seat CSC theater, where the actors were a few feet away, and the set — a rehearsal office — mattered much less than the lighting, which transported us back and forth between this century and the nineteenth. For the Broadway production, John Lee Beatty has put his considerable talent into building with precision a really uninteresting rehearsal room that we must stare at for an hour and 45 minutes, with Peter Kaczorowski’s lighting only a partial salve, and the 900-seat Samuel J. Friedman Theater nearly guaranteeing a more distant perspective on this two-hander.
I enumerate these differences to show I was paying attention, and maybe to establish bragging rights for having seen Nina Arianda back when. But in truth, these complaints are quibbles. Even if “Venus in Fur” works only as a demonstration of some splendid acting, that would be reason enough to see it. Perhaps there is some special insight into acting here. At one point, Vanda says: “You don’t have to tell me about sadomasochism. I’m in the theater.”

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Venus in Fur
At the Samuel J. Friedman
Written by David Ives
Directed by Walter Bobbie
Scenic design by John Lee Betty, costume design by Anita Yavich, lighting by Peter Kaczorowski, sound by Acme Sound Partners
Cast: Nina Arianda, Hugh Dancy
Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes, with no intermission
Tickets: $57 to $116
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