Review: Venus turkiksissa

It’s rare to get to see a theatre performance that you can’t get out of. Somehow, I feel like a part of me forever stayed looking at Venus in fur, and I mean this only in a good way. The performance is mesmerizing, touching, funny, scary, emotional, witty… you run out of words.

Baron von Sacher-Masoch’s book Venus im Pelz is familiar to me through my doctoral dissertation, in which I devote an entire chapter to male masochism specifically in the world of Sacher-Masoch. The best-known theorist who has delved into this is probably Gillez Deleuze in his book Coldness and Cruelty, in which he concretely shows how the works of the Marquis de Sade and Sacher-Masoch, aesthetics and, yes, sex, differ from each other. In Sacher-Masoch’s world, sex is not the main character, but the constant waiting for it, denying it, playing with it, and even disguising it as pain and coldness. All of this will also be seen on the stage of the Pengerkatu stage of the Helsinki City Theatre. David Ives’s play for two actors is a skillful, nuanced text that both highlights and defends Sacher-Masoch’s most important criticisms, sometimes as lame as Sacher-Masoch’s world itself. Yes, a man submits to a woman who at that time was socially, economically and in every other way subordinate to her, but he still holds the strings of the game tightly in his hands. The line between play and reality is blurred, and chaos takes over.

I could go on from this theoretical angle for ages, but if anyone is interested, let them read chapter 4 of my dissertation. In the meantime, let’s get back to the performance itself. The plot is a classic play-within-a-play setting, in which the writer Thomas (Sampo Sarkola) is finishing his auditions, but at the last moment, Wanda (Armi Toivanen) rushes in, who may not be convincing at first, but soon wraps an enchanting spell around Thomas by memorizing the already unpublished text and internalizing her role perfectly. The play moves between today (concretely, the note on the wall announced the date as 20.4.) and the fantasy of the play, until their boundaries finally blend into a completely enigmatic ending, where the woman becomes the Woman, Wanda is Aphrodite, and the man is just a shaking sock. It remains unclear whether this vibration is now the Sacher-Masochian complete pleasure, or whether the monstrous nightmare is too much after all. Is a completely free woman with all the power too scary a thought for a man?

Because this is what the play is about, power and its eroticization. In the House of Cards series, the protagonist conjures up a statement: “Everything is about sex except sex itself. It’s about power.” Who takes power, who gives it, is it possible that the feeling can be experienced as erotic. Yet this is not sadomasochism: this is what it is, Sacher-Masochist masochism. Keep the modern-day Fifty Shades, this is the real and original.

Armi Toivanen is the glorious Wanda. She squeezes all the juices out of the role: sexiness, humour, seriousness, cruelty and femininity so that it looks effortless and natural. In the role of Wanda, Toivanen fires at full blast and completely captivates her audience. Sampo Sarkola, on the other hand, is the perfect support, a mirror through which the audience falls in love with Wanda as mercilessly as Thomas himself, but Sarkola does not remain just a buffoon. With professionalism, she knows how to both lift her co-actors to the heights and take her own space, where soulful and precise acting comes into its own. The couple’s chemistry is palpable, although there are very few touches in the play (and the spanking is only given as a hint). Sexiness and eroticism are created with small gestures: silence (it’s wonderful that there is still theatre where silence is not afraid!), mimicry accompanied by sound effects that emphasize fantasy, resonant and barely distinguishable music, and of course long, burning gazes.

In addition to eroticism, the stage also creates deep reflection and a purposeful, questioning atmosphere, which is mainly to blame for the fact that I still haven’t really processed what I saw last night. It created one of those eternal moments that is easy to return to, where you remember everything and nothing at the same time. I’m a masochist, the play is a goddess. And I will kneel at its feet.