Dark Comedy

A staged reading of “Venus in Fur,” David Ives’s darkly funny adaptation of Sacher-Masoch’s erotic novel “Venus in Furs,” will take place Tuesday night at 7:30 at Guild Hall as part of the JDTLab series.

Thomas (Tristan Vaughan) is a writer-director whose new play, “Venus in Furs,” is an adaptation of the 1870 novel about the relationship between a man and the mistress to whom he becomes enslaved. In the midst of auditions for the female lead, which are going badly, Vanda (Tina Jones) appears and convinces Thomas to let her try out.

As they perform scenes from the play-within-a-play, they become caught up in the characters they are reading, and the balance of power shifts, with the actress eventually dominating the director.

When the play opened in 2011, Charles Isherwood called it “as funny as any play currently on Broadway” in his New York Times review. The performance is free, but reservations are required.