06 May Tall Tales: “Venus in Fur” at Denver’s “Curious Theatre”
At the end of “Venus in Fur,” running through Saturday, June 14 at The Curious Theatre in downtown Denver, I wanted to watch it all over again.
Karen Slack as Vanda-Wanda and Brett Aune as Thomas Novachek-Severin von Kushemski. Images courtesy of The Curious Theatre.
The play ends up in a place so far removed from the opening moments that I wanted to study the transformation one more time, better armed with the knowledge of the shape-shifting to come.
“Venus in Fur” runs in real time. One hour and forty-five minutes of stage time (no intermission) is one hour and forty-five minutes in the sometimes savage and sometimes hilarious entanglement between a playwright/director and an actress.
The cliché would be to say that layers are peeled back and inner selves are revealed. In the case of “Venus in Fur,” whole chunks of human soul are ripped open as playwright and actress manage to crawl up inside each other’s skins and find out what each other needs—and what each other wants.
The situation is simple: an audition. The setting is a dilapidated old garment-district building in New York. Playwright Thomas Novachek is wrapping things up after a disappointing day of searching for the right actress. He is both the writer and would-be director. He has seen a parade of women try out for the part of Wanda von Dunayev in a play he’s written based on the 1870 novel Venus in Furs (plural). And in walks Vanda Jordan. Yes, Vanda auditioning for the role of Wanda. We instantly tag her as loser. She’s late. She’s pissed off. She’s unprepared. She has excuses. She pleads for a chance to run through a few lines. Thomas first says no, then caves in to her cajoling.
And the world changes. Vanda utters the first lines as Wanda. We feel it. So does Thomas.
Repulsion turns to attraction. Possibilities, of all kinds, arise.
Who knows more about sex? Who knows more about power? Who knows more about control? Who knows more about character, false fronts, professed principles, lust, allure, succumbing, submitting, or climbing, so to speak, on top? Who is more in touch with the depths of their own character, Vanda or Thomas? Audition between actress and director morphs into exchange between woman and a man (and I’m only touching on a few layers of the complexity within).
As Vanda, Karen Slack is spellbinding. She is raw, rough and goofy as Vanda and then (snap!) perfectly cool, poised and self-assured as Wanda. Vanda is an actress, after all, and Slack flips the Vanda-Wanda switch as easily as she sheds her clothes. Of course, Vanda is only, at first, giving us (and Thomas) a slice of herself, the late-for-the-audition actress. There is a more to come. Vanda is multi-layered and Wanda is multi-layered and, of course, Thomas is stirred first as himself and then later, as they keep running lines, as Wanda’s counterpart in the play, Severin von Kushemski. (Sound confusing? It’s not. With David Ives’ sharp script and Chip Walton’s crisp direction, the role-playing is easy to track.)
Vanda- Wanda bares her soul – and then some. Image courtesy of The Curious Theatre.
It’s Karen Slack who gets down to her skimpy black underwear within the first few minutes of the play and it’s her energy and probing questions that drive the story forward. So it’s hard to take our eyes off her strutting and posing. In a two-person real-time play like “Venus and Fur,” she needs a worthy combatant and Brett Aune is every bit her match as Thomas (and Severin). He is both amazed and happily horrified at the creature who controls the lights, returns repeatedly to her dark duffel bag of tricks, and starts fiddling with the dangling chains like she knows a thing or two about their possible uses. Aune’s performance is more subtle than Slack’s juicy role, but just as adept. Thomas needed a perfect actress to carry the load for his adaptation. Did the perfect star stumble in out of the storm? Or did he conjure her up? Either way, how these two keep the energy up non-stop for nearly two hours is, by itself, jaw-dropping.
Another near-magical set at the Curious (by Michael Duran) provides a perfectly grimy space. The former sweatshop plays multiple roles (some subtle, nifty dungeon-like features) and Kevin Brainerd’s costumes also telegraph mixed messages, particularly when Vanda tugs on the 19th-century white gown that does nothing to conceal Vanda’s skimpy black garments underneath. Want layers? “Venus in Fur” will keep you digging for hours after the lights go dark.
“Venus in Fur” is a big thick jolt of theatrical lightning that will zap your gut and light up your head.
Editor’s note: Telluride Inside… and Out’s monthly (more or less) column, Tall Tales, is so named because contributor Mark Stevens is one long drink of water. He is also long on talent. Mark was raised in Massachusetts. He’s been a Coloradoan since 1980. He’s worked as a print reporter, national news television producer, and school district communicator. He’s now working in the new economy and listed under “s” for self-employed. Mark has published two Colorado-based mysteries, “Antler Dust” (2007) and “Buried by the Roan” (2011). Midnight Ink will publish the third book, “Trapline,” in the fall of 2014 and is under contract for a fourth book in the series, too. For more about Mark, check out his website.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.