There's ample evidence at the Cincinnati Playhouse as to why David Ives' Tony-nominated play Venus in Fur is the most produced script in America this season. I saw the opening performance last evening, and it's an entertaining attention-grabber. Inspired by an erotic Victorian novel, it's the story of a playwright who's adapted it for the stage but despairing of finding the right actress — until Vanda appears. Despite the initial impression she makes, she proves to be almost too good to be true. Greta Wohlrabe is a marvel in this role, flipping between being an ambitious, over-enthused wannabe and a commanding, demanding, sophisticated paramour who knows the character she wants to play and how to get what she wants. It's sexy and funny — and a great evening for grown-ups. Through May 17. Tickets ($30-$75): 513-421-3888.
Want to try something new this weekend? A new theater company, Women in Theatre (WIT) is staging Joe Calarco's
Walter Cronkite Is Dead at St. John United Church of Christ in Bellevue, Ky. Two women stuck in an airport together end up sharing a table: One, from Washington, D.C., is reserved and educated, yearning for peace and quiet; the other is a chatty Southerner who can't stop talking. Their conversation, according to the show's publicity, is "funny, difficult, deeply revealing and astonishingly frank." Through
May 3. Tickets:
859-441-6882.
Stacy Sims, my
CityBeat colleague, thought that New Edgecliff Theatre's production of
Other People's Money was pretty good. (
CityBeat review
here.) Jerry Sterner's 1989 play remains timely, the story of a rapacious business guy who stands to destroy a small town when he buys a company that is pretty much the sole livelihood of the residents of a small Rhode Island town. Stacy called the show "good entertainment" and added, "it just might provoke you to consider whom you are listening to today." It's onstage at the Aronoff's Fifth Third Bank Theater through
Saturday evening.
Stacy liked Know Theatre's production of
The Twentieth-Century Way enough to give it a Critic's Pick in her
CityBeat review
here. It's two actors playing two actors in 1914 who are hired to play gay men in Long Beach and entrap "social vagrants" — that is, gay men. It's a multi-leveled script, playing with concepts of what's real and what's "enacted." Heady but fascinating, and it features two excellent actors, Jens Rasmussen and Michael McKeough. You won't be bored if you go to see this one. Through
May 3. Tickets ($15 in advance; $20 at the door):
513-300-5669.
Two productions that will appeal to audiences who like old-fashioned theater remain onstage. With its final performance
on Sunday, Mary Chase's gentle comedy,
Harvey, at the Carnegie in Covington, is about Elwood, a guy who's a little off-kilter — who sees a six-foot-tall white rabbit that no one else believes is real (except the audience). Tickets ($17-$24);
859-957-1940. The classic musical
Gypsy — full of great show tunes — continues at the Covedale through
May 4; it's about Rose, the pushy stage mother who launched her rather unwilling daughter into a burlesque career as Gypsy Rose Lee. (
CityBeat review
here.) Tickets ($21-$24):
513-241-6550.
