The last treat of my 2 day trip to NYC was Venus In Fur at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on 47th Street. This play was drawn from the novella Venus In Furs by Austrian author Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch (from which the word masochism originates).
The manuscript tells of a man, Severin (Thomas,Hugh Dancy in the play), so infatuated with a woman, Wanda (Vanda/Nina Arianda in the play), that requests to be treated as her slave, and encourages her to treat him in progressively more degrading ways. At first Vanda does not understand or relate to the request, but after humoring Thomas for a bit, she finds the advantages of the method to be interesting and enthusiastically embraces the idea, although she disdains Thomas for allowing her to do so.
The novella has been adapted for film five times and in 1967 the musical group Velvet Underground included a song Venus In Furs on their debut album.
The book inspired the 2010 play Venus In Fur set in the modern day.
