Calling all horny gremlins! You won’t need rope or handcuffs to stay in your seat at this production. Dirty Gold Theatre’s Venus in Fur generates enough electricity to keep you grounded. It’s an investigation of love, or at least lustful fantasy, entrancingly exploring the line between vulnerability and control.
Venus in Fur, the 2010 David Ives play based on the 1870 Leopold von Sacher-Masoch erotic novel that inspired the term “masochism,” luxuriates in that dichotomy. Under director Roy Lazorwitz, with help from intimacy coordinator Trace Turner, Dirty Gold’s Venus shoots sensual sparks. Did the crew somehow sneak dog collars around all of us? This show leaves the audience breathless, paying rapt attention to the performers’ every gulp and finger twitch.
This show leaves the audience breathless, paying rapt attention to the performers’ every gulp and finger twitch.
The stage demands attention immediately. Distorted chattering subtly rises over the house speakers until audience members clue in, hushing for a few precious moments before lights dim and a crackle of foul weather ushers in the action. Soon a rainy night descends, expertly created by lighting/sound head Luis Sandoval and assisted by Evan Sandoval. The still is soon disturbed by the entrance of noxious playwright/director Thomas (Dylan Hoeffler), bemoaning the lack of female talent after a long day of auditioning for his latest – and first – work. His adaptation of Venus in Fur somehow can’t find a properly “feminine” actress to play the lead. Cue Vanda/Wanda (Julia Bennett). She’s late, in leather lingerie with a giant bag of who-knows-what clutched under her arm. But she’s ready for her audition, as long as Thomas will read with her.
Venus is a play within a play, but not in the neat, self-contained layers that phrase usually implies. The walls constantly shift between our play, the characters’ play, and the original book. Bennett and Hoeffler perfectly portray the fluctuating power dynamics. Their chemistry crackles. Each character iteration, as they weave between the present audition room to imagined 1800s Europe, carries a dry-mouthed, panting desire that comes from never knowing what happens next. Again, Lazorwitz and Turner beautifully stage their growing relationship, using physical distance to enhance their delectable dance. At first, actions mimed with full stage lengths between players draw closer as the stakes – and the heat – rise.
At the start, warning signs do ping at Bennett’s young actress in such a vulnerable position. It’s tense seeing them alone with Hoeffler’s Thomas, an older man ostensibly in charge of the entire production. But Bennett summons a psychosexual storm. They drip with sensuality, terrifyingly wresting control from the foppish Thomas. Vanda vacillates between the brash auditioning actress, to the play’s clipped period-piece performance, with a boldness that initially seemed too broad to be real, but soon enticed the audience to the edge of our seats. Bennett’s performance leans toward ferocity. While they are seductive and alluring, there’s a touch of danger that makes their portrayal all the more magnetic.
This hypnotic performance was affirmed by Hoeffler’s Thomas. Any trappings of his upper hand were quickly stripped away by Vanda. He deftly showed off a certain type of grotesque dude genius, a man bloated by his own self-importance, until Vanda efficiently knocked him off his self-erected pedestal. Hoeffler plays the fall admirably, with uneasy twitchiness born of utter longing. His strategic stance shifts and gradual acquiescences show the descent of a man crumbling at the feet of his own weaknesses. Thomas isn’t in charge. There is only Vanda.
Venus in Fur is a fitting foray for Dirty Gold’s first full-scale production. It’s deliciously dirty and theatrical gold, the sexiest sociology lecture anyone has ever experienced.
Venus in Fur
Sterling Stage
Through May 17
This article appears in May 16 • 2025.
