Another Look At the FUR

According to American Theatre magazine, Venus In Fur is the single most-produced show in US theaters in the 2013-2014 season. No fewer than 22 productions of David Ives' work will be staged over the course of this season here in the states. The local theatre to join the Venus in Fur bandwagon this season is the Milwaukee Rep, which opened the show earlier this month.  

I've enjoyed David Ives' work tremendously in the past. His shorts are phenomenally clever. All in the Timing was breathtakingly inventive. I'd seen a production of his Polish Joke some time ago and absolutely loved it. He's such a clever playwright. I have such a high opinion of his work. Too bad about Venus In Fur, though . . . 

It's not like I don't understand the appeal of the play. One actor. One actress. Ninety minutes. No intermission. It all takes place in kind of a low-key space. There's a little bit of costuming to have to deal with, but it''s not that difficult to set-up. Really cheap to produce really easy to sell--especially what with it having a reputation of being sexy. 

The Milwaukee Rep takes advantage of the script as best it can. The story has a playwright/director (played here by Reese Madigan) reluctantly agreeing to give an actress an audition for a rather tricky role. The actress in question is played by Greta Wohlrabe. The production is directed by Laura Gordon and it shows . . . from what I've seen, Gordon is excellent with character work. Madigan does what he needs to do pretty well. He's looking for something and he doesn't know what it is exactly. Wohlrabe does a strikingly good job playing an actress who, on the surface, appears to be very rough around the edges, but proves to be something altogether dazzlingly more than she appears. 

Thanks no doubt in part to Gordon, the characters are rendered in really interesting detail. The rest of it is a bit stagnant in places. The pacing of the show is kind of difficult to manage. Though the script provides a lot of interesting, little details and insights about sexual politics and human sexuality and the nature of human desire and so on, Ives doesn't do a terribly good job of presenting it as a terribly compelling story of two people. That's kind of what you need in a two-person drama/comedy. Ignoring everything beyond the stage (and there is A LOT going on beyond the stage) this still needs to be about two people and that gets kind of lost in the script. 

Any play can be pedestrian as hell as long as it's captivating in some way and Ives, who is normally a brilliant playwright, doesn't do a very good job of making the dialogue between these two characters feel all that compelling. The reason for this is the flow. One moment doesn't necessarily bleed into the next in a very cohesive fashion. With a clunky rhythm to the writing, the script for Venus In Fur makes it really, really difficult to maintain a decent pacing on things. By the end of the play, you've only been through 90 minutes without intermission, but it feels like you've been through something altogether longer and more invasive. Which is perfectly cool if you happen to be into that sort of thing. 

And though the characters are remarkably well-rendered here, we don't get a sense of ever-increasing intensity from beginning to end. He's engaged and she seems to be disinterested. Then she seems engaged and he seems disinterested . . . not with the play or the rehearsal but the general interaction. Without giving too much away here, the dialogue is a gradual revelation as various elements of the relationship between these two characters becomes apparent. There's a gradually growing intensity that can accompany the slow revelation of what's really going on between these two characters. That intensity isn't absolutely necessary, but without it, it never quite hit that mark that it could. The intensity is there in the script, muddled though it may be with A LOT of tiny, little details the Ives floods the dialogue with. The production doesn't seem to have found the intensity that the script has the capacity to achieve. 

Finally . . . the play is sold as being sexy. It's not. Even remotely. I guess I can understand where that perception comes from. The play that the playwright is auditioning the actress for is an adaptation of a work by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch--the author "masochism" is named after. Here we have the subject of sexuality, pain and pleasure being talked about a lot between two attractive people. Wohlrabe wears stockings and a garter. So I guess that's cool. But presenting sexuality doesn't necessarily mean that a show is sexually appealing. And there simply isn't enough of a compelling dynamic between the characters to make Venus In Fur at all sexy. These characters are meeting for the first time at an audition. An audition is a job interview and a job interview is the least appealing way of thinking about a first date. As complicated as things get between the two characters, it's never quite enough to pull the dialogue far enough away from being a job interview to make it feel sexy for me. 

But that aside, it IS an interesting dialogue between two characters that can be fun to think about on an intellectual level. Wohlrabe is fun in her role. I guess another problem I have with the staging here is that the Stiemke Studio is one of the biggest studio theatres in town. This is an intimate interaction between two people . . . and without the benefit of a much smaller venue, some of the physical reality of the play gets lost in all the empty space. 

The Milwaukee Rep's production of Venus in Fur runs through November 3rd at the Stiemke Studio Theatre. For ticket reservations, call 414-224-9490 or visit the Milwaukee Rep online.