What Is the Story of Venus in Fur?
As David Ives’ new play begins, we meet a modern-day playwright/director who has written an adaptation of Venus in Fur, the 1870 novel by Leopold Sacher-Masoch that became infamous when the author’s last name inspired the term “sado-masochism” to describe the interplay of sex and power in the book. An actress arrives to audition, her bag filled with S&M gear and period costumes. Soon the playwright is drawn into reading his own script with this mysterious young woman, with breaks to argue about the meaning of the story and the motivation of the characters.