Altered egos

Venus in Fur
Drawstring Productions
Irish Cultural Centre, Charlottetown
February 13, 2025

This one almost didn’t happen. The play opening and me seeing it both seemed in doubt for a while. Luckily for me, the stars aligned just right and I got to watch new indie theatre company Drawstring Productions’ fleeting-but-fabulous inaugural show, Venus in Fur.

Promoted as a two-week, six-show run, it was belatedly cut back to a single week of three shows. The first night got canceled by stormy weather, I couldn’t see the second night due to other commitments, and I nearly missed the third night when my aging brain mixed up the start time; but my alleged professionalism prevailed, so I made it to the final show. 

It was good. Dang good. So good I even joined in on the reflexive standing ovation that PEI audiences give almost everything (more of a semi-annual gesture for curmudgeonly old me). So good that it’s a little sad to think only two nights’ worth of folks got to see it. Maybe it can get a longer revival at the Benevolent Irish Society (BIS) or move to Victoria or Watermark or the Kings Playhouse or somewhere—so long as the venue is game for something a bit racier than average Island fare.

Racy, said I? Yes indeed, full of profanity, sex talk, sadomasochism and sensually charged power struggles that would be oft-eyebrow-raising even if one of its two characters didn’t spend half her time in black, fishnet-limbed lingerie. Which she does. It’s like we crossed some dimensional barrier into the Malevolent Irish Society.

And while much of the above typically isn’t my cup of tea—I’m a stubbornly vanilla, relentlessly boring guy, so sue me—this is a smart, funny play that treats its subjects with respect, and even the wilder wardrobe choices are defensibly rooted in both story and character.

Penned by popular American playwright David Ives and first staged in 2010, Venus in Fur graduated to Broadway in 2011 and has since been adapted for film and repeatedly remounted around the world. Built on a play within a play, it starts out as a coarsely witty backstage comedy but slowly morphs into something deeper, darker and decidedly weirder.

New York City playwright/director Thomas Novachek (played here by Keir Malone) is holding auditions for his new stage adaptation of the infamous 1870 novel Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch about a 19th Century nobleman, Severin von Kushemski, who falls in worshipful love with the beautiful Vanda von Dunayev and begs her to abuse, dominate and humiliate him—hence Masoch’s writing inspiring the term “masochism.”

After many disastrous auditions, Thomas laments that he cannot find any “sexy-slash-articulate young women with some classical training and a particle of brain in their skulls” for the Vanda role. Then in walks a very tardy auditioner calling herself Vanda Jordan and aggressively insisting “I’m like made for this part, I swear to God.”

Thomas is skeptical. This Vanda (played here by Afton Mondoux) is unpolished, uninhibited, unprofessional, unsubtle, seemingly unschooled. He tries to turn her away. But the implacable Vanda steamrolls her way into an audition, during which she displays amazing talent, disarming insight and occasionally eerie knowledge and abilities. Impressed, and increasingly seduced, Thomas may have found his leading lady – but where exactly is she leading him?

Drawstring producers Sarah Blades and Amanda Rae Donovan, director Alyssa Malone and stage manager Ashley Malone smoothly bring Ives’ blackly comic script to life—the compact BIS stage is well-dressed (give or take a makeshift fuse box), the blocking within its snug layout efficient, the lights and sound effects well executed, the costuming memorable—but the undisputed stars of the show here are its S&M MVPs, M&M: Malone & Mondoux.

Accomplished stage veteran Malone has a few stiff or affected moments but even those gel with the material in terms of Thomas being pompous or playacting or both, and Malone does great work here overall with moments of passionate intensity, palpable dread and adroit comic timing; and Mondoux’s hilarious, creepy, compelling Vanda is a darkly luminous gem of a performance, a sharp-edged yet alluring puzzle box packed with surprises both icy and explosive, seductive and menacing. Venus in Fur is a great vehicle for this gifted acting duo and marks an auspicious debut for Drawstring Productions.