In Venus in Fur‘s opening scene, director/playwright Thomas (Dylan Hoeffler) complains that none of the actresses who’ve auditioned for him that day are good enough or smart enough to play Vanda, the love interest in his new adaptation of Venus in Furs, which is definitely not autobiographical S&M pornography, thank you very much. Thunder rolls. Lightning flashes. Darn, the call to his fiancee drops. And then, almost as if he’s dreamed her into existence, in comes an actress actually named Vanda (Julia Bennett): young, sensual, over-the-top, and nearly naked. She insists on reading with him, and the play-within-a-play that follows is wrought with sexual tension and trading-places power plays. Dirty Gold Theatre director Roy Lazorwitz has created a production that’s sexy, funny, a little scandalous, a little (dare I say) salacious. And it’s fun.

On the one hand, I feel bad for Thomas and his fantasy-turned nightmare. Hoeffler played him rather sympathetically; a helpless romantic helplessly seduced by Vanda’s flattery and commitment to the part. On the other hand, as Vanda points out, he’s pretentious, pedantic, and sexist. One gets the feeling at the end that Thomas is and always has been exactly the kind of misoginystic pervert that Vanda claims he is. Not that Vanda is justified in all of her, uh, tactics, but oh, it’s fun to see her work.

I was really pleased with Sterling Stage’s black box, as the only other time I’ve been was for a show in the bar. (I love not having to go downtown!) The space is large and seems ripe for invention and imagination. I was impressed with Venus’ lighting design (Luis Sandoval) – there was at least one moment where I realized the lighting had changed so gradually I hadn’t even noticed it happen. Magic! Set design, too (Jacob Foster) was high-quality, even if sometimes cramped, despite the size of the stage. Black boxes have their limitations, as all stages do, but it is disappointing to be so close and also not be able to see anything that happened on the divan to stage right. Maybe I should have just gotten a better seat? I would have liked to, but I never actually heard an announcement (if there was one) that the house was open; I wandered through a gap in the curtain because I saw others doing the same.

I think it could have been fun to see Hoeffler struggle a little more against his desires as he “read” from the script, especially early on. Sometimes, it’s clear when either Hoeffler or Bennett have stepped out of the audition and back into their reality; other times, jumps between characters happen so fast that I found myself asking “was that on purpose?” (It was, of course.) It’s clear that Vanda is up to something that she doesn’t want to share, but Thomas raises more questions than he answers, too: where’s the rest of the production team for his play? Is the fiancee on the other side of the phone even real? Is this all just a bad dream?

Where Hoeffler seems to try to hide his interest in Vanda behind artistic concerns, Bennett’s Vanda is clear from the start: I’ll sleep my way to this role one way or another. In some scenarios, a director and a young actress alone in a room easily reads with the power tipped to his side. But not here. It was clear that Bennett’s Vanda controlled the room as soon as she began reading. At first, Bennett felt a bit too self-aware; as the play progressed, though, I found it worked with Vanda’s character – confident, otherworldly, all-knowing, all-powerful. In fact, what I think it fit best is the Vanda-within-the-Vanda; that is, the Vanda being auditioned for. And as the boundary between those two Vandas slipped away, Bennett became even more powerful on stage. In the least creepy way it’s possible to say this: I only wish Bennet hadn’t been in nude tights under their lingerie. Of course, ~doing the work~ shouldn’t mean risking wardrobe malfunctions, actors should feel comfortable in their costumes, and it’s not like anything about the costume was inappropriate otherwise (in fact, I really loved that while Vanda wore all black or all white, Thomas wore earth tones). But, like any Jr. Footlights I love to hate, I feel that the nude tights just read as an obvious We Are Doing Theater Here!

Dirty Gold has a unique mission statement which prioritizes “mindfulness” and “sustainability” throughout their processes. Having never worked with them, I can’t say what this entails in practice (maybe it entails wearing nude tights to be more comfortable in skimpy costumes!). But if you’d like to prove that you can do good, provocative theater while maintaining a safe space for your actors – Venus in Fur is a helluva way to start. It was a delightful, titillating bit of entertainment, and I’m looking forward to seeing what else Dirty Gold produces.

Venus in Fur ran at The Sterling Stage thru May 17, 2025. For more information, visit Dirty Gold Theatre online.