Christian Conn and Erica Sullivan in Venus in Fur, directed by David Muse at the Studio Theatre. Photo credit: Scott Suchman.

The night I saw Venus in Fur, I had strange dreams. Given that the play is inspired by the infamous 1870’s novel that gave birth to the term sado-masochism, I’ll forgive you if your first thought was that my dreams were a dizzying melange of whips, dog collars and PVC boots. After all, Studio Theatre’s press teaser quotes the New York Times as saying this is “90 minutes of good, kinky fun.” However, David Ives’ remarkable play is more than a romp through a fetish wonderland. In its fast burning build-up to the final electrifying minute, it’s the embodiment of that haunting line from Yeats, about a “terrible beauty” being born.

Ok, there’s also whips, dog collars and PVC boots. But every successful seduction needs a hook, right?

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s book Venus in Furs supposes that behind every fetish there’s an “innocent incident,” something almost innocuous in the past that marked us on a primal level. For his protagonist, Severin Kushemski, it’s his childhood punishment by an imperious aunt as he writhes under her whip on her cast-off fur cape. As an adult, he will seek subjugation at the hands of his lover, Vanda Dunayev. We don’t know what the “innocent incident” is that drives David Ives’ protagonist, a playwright directing his own adaptation of Sacher-Masoch’s novel, but we know from the first minute that he’s an arrogant misogynist just begging for a beating. Something is slouching towards his Bethlehem, all right, coming to take vengeance, but he’s oblivious to the danger until it’s too late.

At the end of a long day of auditioning to cast his own adaptation of Venus in Furs, Thomas (Christian Conn) is unloading his frustration over the phone about the paucity of truly sensual, powerful women to play his Vanda. It’s the kind of tirade an old-school Hollywood producer might have made, peppered with insulting assumptions made all the more comical by the fact that the shabby surroundings clearly indicate he’s not a power player. Describing strings of annoying actresses dressed as hookers, dragging bags of props, with voices that sound like “six-year-olds on helium,” he’s surprised when one last supplicant (Erica Sullivan) barges in from the rain with an obscenity-laced plea for an audition.

She’s exactly everything he’s just described. But he’s too blind to see the warning in that eerie similarity. And so begins a riveting game of domination and submission. By the end, Ives reveals in a shocking moment of divine retribution that the dice were loaded all along. Continue reading →

(L-R) Eric Hissom, Chris Genebach, Todd Scofield, Richard Ruiz, and Dan Crane in Cyrano at Folger Theatre, through June 5, 2011. Photo credit: Carol Pratt

If you’re expecting to see Folger Theatre do the traditional over-three-hours-five-acts-cast-of-hundreds production of Cyrano (and yes, having been brought up on Derek Jacobi’s brilliant RSC Cyrano, I was), forget it. You don’t need the caffeine, it’s already built into this lightning fast adaptation by Michael Hollinger and director Aaron Posner. Nine actors play multiple roles over two acts in a translation that may lose some of the poetry but none of the verve.

Or rather, the panache.

Thanks to its constant reinvention in popular culture ever since its debut in 1897, the plot of Edmond Rostand’s play about the swashbuckling 17th-century soldier with an enormous nose and a heart to match is well known enough that slicing and dicing the text isn’t viewed as too sacrilegious. Hollinger’s new translation tosses the Alexandrine couplets in favor of a less formal tone, and the cuts he and Posner made streamline the action to its most essential elements. Sure, I missed a few of my favorite bits and the lusciousness of the Anthony Burgess translation, but that didn’t mar my enjoyment. This adaptation is whistling sharp, like a rapier. Or as a friend put it afterwards, “It’s the Cliff Notes version… if Cliff Notes were actually really good.”

What is the beating, raging heart of this production? Eric Hissom’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Completely believable as both a scathing poet and a dashing fighter, his self-loathing whips him on to acts of self-destructive bravery and selfless love. Battling a hundred knights on the bridge? I bet he could’ve handled a thousand.  Continue reading →

Jenny Jules as Mama Nadi and Rachael Holmes as Sophie in Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater’s production of Ruined April 22-June 5, 2011. Photo by Joan Marcus

There are 683 seats in the Fichandler theater at Arena Stage. The house was packed for Ruined, playwright Lynn Nottage’s 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning play about the atrocities inflicted on women during the Second Congo War (1998-2003). They laughed, they cried, they applauded. They applauded a lot. And then they left. I heard many say “phenomenal” as they exited the theater.

683 seats. In the program, production dramaturg Amrita Mangus notes that “in some villages, as many as 90 percent of the women have been raped.” Eight organizations are listed in the program, including CARE and V-Day, to encourage the audience to act upon what they’ve seen.

I couldn’t help wondering how many audience members would get involved afterwards. There was so much laughter, some of it perhaps nervous, through the first act of the play. So much applause at the end. Would they leave and go back to their comfortable lives, telling others “go see this play!” but not “go get involved!” Would I? There’s a danger with political theater. It allows us to feel involved by the mere act of watching.

Lynn Nottage conducted extensive interviews throughout the Congo with survivors of the brutality of mass rape. Their voices come through authentically in Ruined, and it’s in these moments – especially the monologue by Salima (a riveting Donnetta Lavinia Grays) that opens the second act – that the play is at its most powerful. Continue reading →