Nina Arianda and Hugh Dancy
Photo by Joan Marcus

After a year, Venus in Fur has arrived on Broadway, fifteen minutes longer and fifteen minutes better, with a new leading man and a supercharged leading lady filling the same role in which she skyrocketed to prominence from nowhere. Nina Arianda commands full star attention, so much so that in this, her second outing on Broadway, she gets a hand on her entrance. Chew on that. Hugh Dancy, on stage at opening, is very good but clearly overmatched. And, in a way, that is what the play is about: the dominating relationships of man over woman and woman over man. None of this equal partners nonsense, no. Different nonsense: mistress and servant, master and slave. Thomas (Dancy) a playwright directing his own work based on the Sacher/Masoch studies and biographies, cannot find an actress to play Vanda, his leading character. There is no one compelling enough, feminine enough, bewitching enough, commanding enough to fulfill the dimensions of the creature he has envisioned and, though he will not admit it, longs for.

Crashing her way into the rehearsal studio laden with bags, umbrella and fresh, wet air just as Thomas has given up and is readying to go out into the stormy weather is this wild, leggy, verbose, profane, fascinating jumble of a girl cursing the fates that made her late for this audition, consternated that her name, Vanda, --the same as that of the leading lady in Thomas’s play! Can you imagine!? – is not on the audition list. The wild creature strips down to black bra, black panties, black stockings with black garters, black high heeled booted shoes and is ready to rehearse before Thomas can protest. And protest he does, exercising his authority. But she’s exercising something much more powerful and Thomas gives an inch. She takes the whole nine yards. Thomas, helplessly intrigued, pretends to give in to her badgering, consents to a quick, quick audition because he’s late for meeting his fiancée, but, ah, but—who is ploying whom? In a few minutes, he realizes she not only has a copy of his script, she knows whole scenes as if they were her own and he is easily pleased and teased into playing the scenes full out with her instead of just reading cues for her. Before he knows it he is throwing himself heading into his play and she is no longer this crazy blonde actress, she is Vanda, the Countess who demands his total subjugation. Now, phone calls from his fiancée are irritating interruptions. “Who are you?” he demands of Vanda as she slides seamlessly into the role of dominatrix. And he finds himself in the world he has longed for, in his own play, in emotions bigger than life, “operatic” emotions he has yearned for and never experienced.

To say that Nina Arianda is simply bewitching is to state the obvious. Every sinuous movement of her lovely body, even the crazy antics she needs tp express her own excitement in being taken seriously and in knowing she has conned this poor guy into whatever she wants is to see bewitchment. We see a lovely, enchanting creature who has wound a man around her little finger or any other part of her amazingly seductive body she chooses. And yet, if we were to step outside the spell she has cast over us, we might be able to ask: is she really so beautiful, so alluring, so seductive? I have only seen this kind of bewitchment twice before in decades and decades of theater going. I thought these enchantresses were gone forever. Praise heaven. Or maybe praise its opposite. There may be witches in various theatrical entertainments all up and down the Great White Way but they don’t hold a black candle to this kid.

Yet again this season, set designer John Lee Beatty has created an environment at once stark rehearsal space required but subtlely much more: he gives his actors a raked floor, than which there can be no more energizing environment; you cannot be static on a raked floor; it pitches you at your audience. Anita Yavich’s costumes are so suitable – to coin a phrase – you don’t quite realize you’ve been propelled into the feverish reality of your actors and accept them as they accept their costumes as uniquely theirs in their play within their playing. It’s all so gorgeously convoluted. Playwright David Ives has turned the screw for this production three turns past credible but we go with his ratcheting up the sexual tensions, egged on, no doubt, by devilish director Walter Bobbie. Amazing how sexy putting on clothes can be. It’s way too late to be sensible.

Samuel Friedman Theater. 261 West 47^th Street. Tickets: $57-$121. 212-239-6200. $27 student rush. Tue, Wed 7 pm, Thus-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, St, Sun 2 pm.