VENUS IN FUR Reviews

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 1:25pm

Today is Tuesday, November 8, marking the official opening night performance of Venus in Fur, David Ives' latest offering, in its Broadway premiere following preview performances which began October 13, and after an Off-Broadway incarnation in 2010. Up-and-coming Broadway starlet, Nina Arianda returns to play Vanda, again under the direction of Walter Bobbie, joined by Hugh Dancy, who plays Thomas in this two-hander.

This limted engagement, produced by Manhattan Theater Club, has performances scheduled through December 18 at the Friedman.

[bjh2114]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 6:57pm

Financial Times is mixed to positive (3 out of 5 stars):

"For the first half-hour, the parallels are beautifully balanced. If Venus in Fur had been a one-act, I would have rushed to assign it five stars. In saying this, I realise that I am adhering to the standard evaluation of Ives: adept at miniatures. But that judgment is no more disparaging than to say that Alice Munro excels at short stories."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/84e29bfe-09ee-11e1-85ca-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1dA3XyMZi

[bjh2114]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 7:58pm

amNY is mostly positive (3 stars) with a rave for Nina:

"In lesser hands, it might not work at all. But thanks to the stunning performance of Nina Arianda, solid support from her co-star Hugh Dancy and the spot-on direction of Walter Bobbie, "Venus in Fur" makes for an often captivating experience. There's no nudity, but this is one of the most genuinely sexual shows you've ever seen."

http://www.amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/theater-review-venus-in-fur-3-stars-1.3306292
Updated On: 11/8/11 at 07:58 PM

[bjh2114]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 8:00pm

Variety is mixed. Loves the cast, doesn't love the play:

""Venus in Fur," David Ives' cheeky adaptation of Leopold Sacher-Masoch's erotic 1870 novel and originally mounted at the Classic Stage Company, improves a lot in this Broadway transfer. Chalk that up to helmer Walter Bobbie's savvy re-casting of one of the players in this two-hander: In his confident turn as a modern-day playwright-director keen on exploring the sado-masochistic sexual dynamic, Hugh Dancy gives hot co-star Nina Arianda someone substantial to play to. Play is still overwritten and pretentious, but it's a whole lot sexier with this well-matched pair taking turns at playing master and slave.

...

But even at under two hours, the play still feels overworked, padded with repetitive seduction scenes and overwrought psycho-sexual arguments -- much of it delivered in stilted 19th-century locutions. Talk about sadism."

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117946546

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 8:00pm

Variety is mixed:

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117946546'

"Venus in Fur," David Ives' cheeky adaptation of Leopold Sacher-Masoch's erotic 1870 novel and originally mounted at the Classic Stage Company, improves a lot in this Broadway transfer."

"But even at under two hours, the play still feels overworked, padded with repetitive seduction scenes and overwrought psycho-sexual arguments -- much of it delivered in stilted 19th-century locutions. Talk about sadism."

[bjh2114]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 8:01pm

Haha broadwaydevil. Same time, same pull quotes.

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 8:01pm

Haha. Yup. I was about to post the same. Great minds use the same pull quotes?

[thismyshow]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 8:08pm

wow, mixed reviews. I honestly thought after its off broadway production got such great reviews that this was going to get raves across the board....

[bjh2114]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 8:11pm

Off-Broadway the reviews were mixed too. The raves were all for Nina, not the play. Some people loved the play, but the praise for Nina was almost unanimous.

Backstage is positive:

"There is some loss of intimacy in the transfer from CSC's vest-pocket three-quarter space to the Samuel Friedman's Broadway-scale proscenium, but Walter Bobbie's staging remains robust, seamlessly shifting from theater-insider comedy to near-porn-level eroticism. Peter Kaczorowski's versatile lighting aids in this department, providing multiple moods, as do Anita Yavich's sexy costumes, which facilitate the metamorphosis from the "real" world where the play begins to the nightmarish realm of sexual fantasy where it ends.

But Arianda remains the engine that drives this intermissionless thrill ride, revving on all cylinders as she progresses from desperate actor to imperious seductress to all-powerful goddess. She gets an added fuel injection from her new acting partner. Dancy adds depths to Thomas that the role's originator, Wes Bentley, failed to find. "

http://www.backstage.com/bso/reviews-ny-theatre-broadway/ny-review-venus-in-fur-1005489162.story

[bjh2114]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 8:17pm

Faster Times is mixed with another rave for Nina:

"The play largely works as a script because of those twists. I am not someone who sees Ives offering special insight into relationships between the sexes, or power dynamics in general, or sexism in the theater, or, you know, anything. “Venus in Fur” is a fun, dizzy and hazy maze.

Even those who have not seen “Venus in Fur” before, though, will likely grow tired of the twists, which become repetitive and a bit confusing as the end nears; the one at the very end is especially disappointing.

...

I enumerate these differences to show I was paying attention, and maybe to establish bragging rights for having seen Nina Arianda back when. But in truth, these complaints are quibbles. Even if “Venus in Fur” works only as a demonstration of some splendid acting, that would be reason enough to see it. Perhaps there is some special insight into acting here. At one point, Vanda says: “You don’t have to tell me about sadomasochism. I’m in the theater.”

http://www.thefastertimes.com/newyorktheater/2011/11/08/venus-in-fur-review-nina-arianda-dominates/
Updated On: 11/8/11 at 08:17 PM

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 9:07pm

The Hollywood Reporter is mixed-positive.

"David Ives play is a tart divertissement that lacks concision, but Nina Arianda and Hugh Dancy sizzle."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/venus-fur-theater-review-258934

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 9:11pm

The AP is positive and an absolute rave (!!) for Nina Arianda.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20111108/us-theater-review-venus-in-fur/

"Dancy's transition from arrogant dictator to needy supplicant is first class, but Tony Award-nominated Arianda is simply fearsome. Her ability to go from dumb to powerful (also on show last season in the Broadway revival of "Born Yesterday") is remarkable and her physicality here, from her Noo Yawk accent to crossing her legs like a longshoreman in a frilly dress, is thrilling."

"The last line of the play is "Hail, Aphrodite!" but it might as well be "Hail, Arianda!"

[#1Elphie]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 10:12pm

Isherwood reviewed for the New York Times, and it's a rave (especially for Arianda).

"Lightning flashes intermittently throughout “Venus in Fur,” the spooky sex comedy by David Ives that sizzled open on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Tuesday night. But you’re not really likely to notice. The flickering of those stage lights barely registers beside the incandescent Nina Arianda, the sensational young actress recreating the role that made her a name to watch when she first starred in the play Off Broadway. Portraying an actress giving the audition of a lifetime, Ms. Arianda is giving the first must-see performance of the Broadway season, a bravura turn that burns so brightly you can almost feel the heat on your face.

To describe Mr. Ives’s play as a sex comedy may conjure images of creaky old farces involving philandering bosses and naughty secretaries. But while it’s as funny as any play currently on Broadway, “Venus in Fur,” stylishly directed by Walter Bobbie, is also something darker, stranger and altogether more delicious: a suspense-packed study of the erotics (and the semiotics) of power, in which the two participants — the terrific Hugh Dancy portrays the writer-director hosting the audition — prove to be seriously, almost scarily adept....

....I’m not sure Mr. Ives himself has settled firmly on a resolution to the play’s central mystery — the motives and identity of the elusive Vanda — but who cares? With the commanding Ms. Arianda giving a performance of such intoxicating allure, “Venus in Fur” provides a seriously smart and very funny stage seminar on the destabilizing nature of sexual desire: vanilla-flavored, kink-festooned or anything in between."

http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/theater/reviews/venus-in-fur-by-david-ives-with-nina-arianda-review.html?pagewanted=1 Updated On: 11/8/11 at 10:12 PM

[dreaming]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 10:15pm

I think Nina Arianda might win that Tony this year.

Nina, meet Tony.

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 10:29pm

A rave from Bloomberg and a HUGE RAVE for Nina.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-09/kinky-venus-sizzles-on-broadway-sam-waterston-s-lear-review.html

"But the effortless changes of temperament, accent and gesture here, and the giddy-making timing, reveal virtuosity of higher dimension altogether. Shes dazzling."

(Dreaming...I'm thinking you may be right about that Tony)

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 10:33pm

Philadelphia Inquirer is a RAVE and again raves about Nina Arianda and Hugh Dancy.

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/arts/133473648.html

"When the two characters reach the hottest parts of the play they are reading, it's as if the last little bit of their real-life social filters suddenly rev, and Venus in Fur is all the more erotic for the brakes they suddenly pump."

"If you go, don't dress too warmly. There's enough heat on stage to carry the show through winter."

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 10:35pm

The Village Voice is mixed.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/2011/11/venus_in_fur_on.php

"It's not all smoothly entertaining--the play within a play is less riveting than the actor-versus-playwright dynamic, and without an intermission, it's a long sit--but for a pristinely acted literary sex comedy, it's hard to beat Venus In Fur, except with a stick."

[quizking101]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 10:38pm

It's official:
Nina Arianda has that Tony in Jan Maxwell's bag!

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 10:38pm

Theatermania is a RAVE for the play, Arianda, and Dancy.

http://www.theatermania.com/broadway/reviews/11-2011/venus-in-fur_44250.html

"Everything about the vibrant and provocative piece seems to have been enriched by its transfer from the intimate thrust venue downtown to the larger proscenium house uptown."

"Two exceptional performers -- Nina Arianda and Hugh Dancy -- square off like prize fighters in David Ives' Venus in Fur, playing at Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway."

[broadwaybaby086]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 10:40pm

So happy to see great notices for Dancy and Arianda!! :o)

[dreaming]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 10:43pm

Yep, I think she may have nailed it. The reviews speak for themselves. And she will deserve it for an extraordinary performance.

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 11:13pm

The NY Daily News is mixed-positive on the play and a RAVE for Dancy and Arianda.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/hurts-good-hugh-dancy-nina-arianda-star-broadway-comedy-power-sexes-s-m-article-1.974269?localLinksEnabled=false

"Whoever said lightning doesnt strike twice hasnt seen Nina Arianda reprise her breakout role in David Ives clever but repetitive comedy Venus in Fur.

"After a fantastic first hour, the story restates whats already been said. This issue nagged in the downtown premiere and now the Manhattan Theatre Club production has taken on an additional 15 minutes. Thats less glaring and irritating now because both actors are so terrific together."

[ljay889]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 11:32pm

It will be an uphill battle for Arianda, as the show will be long closed by Tony time. The voters seem to suffer from short term memory.

[Lavieboheme3090]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 11:37pm

^ Haha! Quizking!

[bjh2114]

Posted: 11/8/11 at 11:43pm

Somewhat surprisingly, Matthew Murray is VERY positive with the love letter of all love letters for Nina:

"Arianda, however, provides no end of it. With every word, every glance, every****of her hip she says something new about the way men view women, about the way writers and directors view actors, and about the way human beings view each other. What you glean from her every second onstage is that you should never take anyone for granted because you have no way of knowing what he or she is truly capable of — you can always be surprised.

This is what the Vandas are all about, to be sure, but Arianda crows it loudest of all as she stakes her claim to pride of place among the upcoming generation of stage stars. If there's any justice in the world, Arianda and the infinite characters she's apparently capable of playing will be crowing that on Broadway for years, if not decades, to come."

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/index.html

ETA: I love that BWW won't allow the use of the word "c-ck" to mean "tilt". Way to go, auto-censor... Updated On: 11/8/11 at 11:43 PM