| Star Tribune - Highly Recommended
"... Sass gives his actors permission to go rogue in search of the uncensored emotions of lust. At turns vulgar, eloquent and intellectually incisive, the production gathers speed to its bracing and unanticipated conclusion. This is wickedly good theater."
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Twin Cities Pioneer Press - Recommended
"...In the presence of all the thoughtful and skillful work surrounding it, the unfulfilled promise of that magic makes "Venus in Fur" -- whatever its other charms -- ultimately frustrating. In the end, then, the play delivers more teasing than consummation."
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How Was The Show - Recommended
"...It's a dark and stormy night. Working in a rented and calculatedly funky New York City rehearsal studio, director slash playwright slash occasional actor Thomas is ending a long day of auditions for his adaptation of the obscure German novel Venus Im Pelz by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Thomas phones his girlfriend Stacy and vents: actresses are smarmy, tarted up, empty-headed trollops with fancy headshots. He tosses a stack of resumes into the round file and prepares to leave."
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Aisle Say Twin Cities - Recommended
"...What frustrates Venus in Furs is that it seems to want to say more about gender, class, and power than it ultimately does. Ives pokes fun at this pretension several times during the play, but the script is so ripe with commentary about each character's desires and motivations that it is a challenge not to try and read more into each new revelation. (Besides, without some sort of broader comment on gender, the ending just doesn't make much sense.) My advice: put the play's possible political agenda to one side, since either the direction or the writing doesn't deliver that message quite clearly enough. Instead, just relax and enjoy this sharp-witted, sexually-charged ode to the liberating potential of a change of clothes or accent - which, when it comes down to it, is kind of the idea behind theater in the first place."
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