For anyone who grew up thinking about shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather, New York has an elusive mystery that gets deeper the more you swim around in it. It’s one of the most exciting places to be at any given time, and moment for moment, it’s probably the best of everything. There are multiple histories of multiple cultures making up New York at the present, and one of the most obvious cultures is the one of theatre. There is a tremendous history here that makes visitors who happen to be holding tickets to a New York Broadway sense that there’s more than just a casual night on the town at stake.
When you see a play here, there is always the possibility of entering into an experience that will change your life. It’s not only in the usual ways that plays can completely change our perceptions of the world. Although, with playwrights like David Ives, who specializes in creating constructions of reality where the seams are all visible, there is always the possibility of having your world shaken up in the most delightful way. He’s one of the few living playwrights who consciously evokes some of the early avant-garde traditions, and seems to be an unusually cubist writer.
Cubist writers don’t sell plays, though. However, funny and quirky writers do, and he’s also running on that much safer ground. His new work Venus in Fur is a mind-bending adventure into representation. The play takes its title from the same book that the Velvet Underground got their song, and the themes are similar. This is less rock and roll and more theatre, however, where the conceit revolves around an audition and realities that keep breaking and bending into each other. The play might be too short or too long for some, but for those looking for a good time this week, it’s just right.
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