Theatre review: Venus in Fur

Patrick Marber’s new project this week sees him direct the British premiere of US hit Venus in Fur, David Ives’ riff on the 1870 novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch – who gave his name to masochism, largely due to the book and its scandalous reputation. In it Severin, a man who traces back to childhood a desire to be dominated and punished by women, meets a woman he believes can give him what he’s been looking for all his life. She agrees to marry him if he completes a year as her slave to her satisfaction, and produces a contract to that effect; he ends up getting what he asked for but not exactly what he expected. This story becomes the play-within-Ives’ play, in which Thomas (David Oakes) is a New York playwright who’s written an adaptation of the novel he also plans to direct. After a day of disappointing auditions he’s failed to find an actress to play his Venus.

Theatre review: After Miss Julie

If TV period dramas have taught us one thing, it's that 1930s and '40s chauffeurs' primary function was to make themselves available for sex at the lady of the house's whim. And so it is in After Miss Julie, Patrick Marber's adaptation of Strindberg's Miss Julie. Marber makes the play's class relations particularly British by setting the play in a country house in 1945, on the night of Labour's election victory, with the working man and woman looking like they're about to get more of a say in the world. (Thanks to the Beautiful People soundtrack, "Things Can Only Get Better" is on my iPod, which chose to play it on my way home; wrong election, but the right idea.) Patrick Burnier's set makes the audience descend a long staircase to the ground level of the Maria, bringing us to the kitchen of a country house. Most of the staff are upstairs celebrating, and the master of the house is in London on business, but his daughter Miss Julie (Natalie Dormer) has stayed behind. Cook Christine (Polly Frame) has skipped the party though and is in the kitchen making a snack for chauffeur John (Kieran Bew) whom she's "unofficially" engaged to; she's also making a foul-smelling concoction intended to make Julie's lapdog miscarry its puppies.