Category: Patrick Marber

Despite the sharpness and cleverness of the writing which at times is bitingly funny, does Venus in Furs go far enough to not be part of the #MeToo problem itself?

“It’s a serious novel. It’s a central text of world literature.
‘Basically it’s S&M porn'”

What a charged moment for Venus in Fur to open into. As the fallout from the Harvey Weinstein revelations continues to reverberate around social media and perhaps even society at large, a play about the sexual dynamic between an actress and and a director and the erotic power play that emerges out of her audition feels…challenging. Intriguingly written, thought-provokingly staged and superbly acted, it nevertheless left something niggling at me.

David Ives’ play was extremely well received off- and on-Broadway at the beginning of this decade and it has a tricksy cleverness to its meta-textual construction and surfeit of theatrical in-jokes. A brash young playwright has spent a long day auditioning for his adaptation of Venus in Furs, an 1869 novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who literally put the masochism in S&M. Arriving late and swearing like a trooper, Vanda pleads for the chance to be heard but as an eventual audition becomes a read-through, little is as it seems. Continue reading “Review: Venus in Fur, Theatre Royal Haymarket”