Theatre
Venus in Fur
Blue Box Theatre, Msida

Power is one of the most complex desires of the human condition. Its influences are intricately woven into the fundamental aspects of our personalities and it manifests itself in multiple ways.

Masquerade has chosen to explore the manifestation of power in what appears to be the psychological complexities of the sadomaschocistic mind.

However, their choice of David Ives’s excellent 2010 play, Venus in Fur, goes beyond the implied kink of the dominant-submissive type of relationship and rightly explores, as their own blurb puts it, “love, lust and literature”.

Currently running at Blue Box, Msida, Venus in Fur is based on a real novella by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (Venus in Furs, 1870). It takes the well-known genre of the play within a play and works on its more subtle meanings. It is not merely a play which takes place on stage at a theatre when an actress turns up for her audition of Venus in Fur; but it goes beyond that and explores the variations on the theme of play – from play-acting to sexual play and playing with someone’s feelings, to playing the innocent.

The play, in fact, ‘plays’ with the ideas of power as well as the audience’s expectations and, of course, with the notion that the boundaries of reality and fantasy are easily blurred, making for very dangerous play.

As a two-hander, director Michael Mangion made excellent casting choices in Thomas Camilleri as Thomas Novachek, the writer and director of Venus in Fur, who late one night, at the end of a long and fruitless session of auditions, sees one final, very insistent young woman to audition for the part of Vanda – Vanda Jordan, played impeccably by Jo Caruana.

Caruana’s ability to change from an apparently young and brash American actress in contemporary times into an experienced, sophisticated European woman in 1870 was a strong enough contrast and exercise in itself

The use of the same names for the actors as well as the characters they played served to blur those boundaries between fact and fiction all the more – where one personality merges into another.

It was serendipitous that the Maltese actor (Camilleri) also shared the name of both fictional director and eventually, on Vanda’s orders, fictional character in the fictional play, thus becoming completely subsumed in the two identities he was playing and merging it with his own.

In fact, both actors were so comfortably convincing in all the parts they played that their versatility was showcased at its best. Caruana’s ability to change from an apparently young and brash American actress in contemporary times into an experienced, sophisticated European woman in 1870 was a strong enough contrast and exercise in itself.

But to sustain both very nuanced characters with their own deceptive false fronts and switch from one to the other at will, takes skill and strength in its execution – which Caruana managed exceptionally well.

Camilleri was no less adept at managing to navigate the different emotions of two very different men, who are equally entranced by the woman they are up against. He too gave a very sharp and sensitive performance which confirmed his ability to slip from one character to another with the subtlest of changes.

Mangion’s direction ensured the right sort of dynamic was sustained evenly throughout the piece and was particularly aided by the lighting design.

Ives’s script is a tribute to intertextuality, research and psychological exploration. Its clever literary allusions and probing questions about the power dynamics between men and women, cleverly leave the female character in a constant state of dominance, thanks to an unforeseen plot twist and very clean editing.

Ives, in fact, does not sacrifice technique for clarity, working with the complexities of a richly sensual but disciplined script which uses elements of sadomasochism to expose the power struggles of the human psyche – the feminine and the masculine, desire and lust – not solely on a sexual but also on an intellectual level; love – for oneself and for another and most crucially, power and control.

This performance of Venus in Fur did justice to all of these elements in one of the best shows this season, confirming Masquerade’s dedication to producing excellent theatrical experiences. Definitely one to watch.

■ Venus in Fur is being staged at Blue Box Theatre, Msida on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8pm.