Venus in Furs, by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, adapted by Neal Harvey, directed by Marcel Dorney. Design by Lucie Sprague, lighting design by Tristan Bourke, sound design and compisition by Dani Kirby. With Angus Grant, Joel Radcliffe and Karen Roberts. Elbow Room @ Theatreworks, St Kilda, Melbourne, until May 18. Bookings: (03) 9534 3388

The 19th century writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch earned himself a dubious form of immortality when the psychiatrist Krafft-Ebing named a sexual perversion after him. These days, with the Marquis de Sade, he is best remembered as half of the term sado-masochism. But the contemporary image of a leather-clad dungeon mistress that this evokes is a poor reflection of the literature that inspired it. Neither the monstrous boredom of Sade’s vicious fantasies nor the cruel utopian desires of Sacher-Masoch are straightforward texts.

Both can be argued to be about liberation. Sade’s novels Justine or 120 Days of Sodom, written in prison during the French Revolution, enact a philosophy of the libertine, a succession of endless orgies and increasingly cruel sexual permutations which evoke a loathsome tedium, a savage view of human behaviour that directly argued with the basics tenets of the Enlightenment. Sacher-Masoch’s novel, Venus in Furs, is on the other hand a product of late romanticism. And although his novel is often called, with some justification, a misogynist book that takes the ancient war of the sexes to a logical conclusion, it contains an interesting paragraph that ought to give pause to easy dismissal.

Woman, claims Sacher-Masoch, is inevitably man’s enemy. "She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion," he says. "This she can become only when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work." Sacher-Masoch shares Nietzsche’s insight that passive, destructive femininity is a creation of men themselves.

The “woman question”, in fact, haunted the intelligentsia of the late 19th century. The same idea illuminates Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, in which Nora is trapped in a marriage that infantalises her, playing the role of a frivolous, expensive woman to please her husband. Sacher-Masoch’s critique of the crippling effects of socially determined gender roles on sexual relationships is a crucial key to the novel, and perhaps the most radical statement in it.

This idea is vaguely present in Neal Harvey’s theatrical adaptation, but never as explicit as it is in the book. Harvey’s adaptation is elegantly theatrical, with only a couple of dramaturgical hiccups (notably towards the end), and has focused more on the destructive force of idealism, which through the force of its visionary desire can scorch reality to bare earth.

The hero Severin (Angus Grant) is a bored, independently wealthy young man who encounters his nemesis, Wanda (Karen Roberts) while he is staying in a hotel. She is an unconventional and sensual woman who unashamedly pursues her own pleasure without heed for societal conventions. Severin immediately falls obsessively in love with her and, unable to contemplate the prospect of losing her, begs to be Wanda’s slave.

She is initially reluctant to fulfil his fantasy, but discovers an inner capacity for tyranny that thrills and alarms her, and which she takes further than Severin intended or imagined. He literally creates his cruel mistress out of his desire for a pure, ecstatic love: a love that clearly has very little to do with Wanda’s own desires, but which inevitably schools her in a new and vicious pleasure.

Marcel Dorney gives us a production of intelligent clarity, enacted on a minimal set. Lucie Sprague’s design consists of draped black curtains that can be lit to be opaque or transparent, exploiting the cavernous space of Theatreworks by at once defining a domestic interior and – through the transparencies – a darker emptiness outside it. The luxurious fabrics of the costumes and furniture summon a fin de siecle aesthetic of sensual pleasure.

The direction focuses on Sacher-Masoch’s lushly beautiful language, and elicits two courageous performances that are leavened with a cool and bitter irony. As the reluctant goddess released into her power, Roberts steps unerringly between brittle dismay and disturbing pleasure in her cruelty and power. And Grant’s performance as Severin gives a startling verisimilitude to a role that embraces both comic desolation and passionate obsession. It’s worth seeing for the performances alone.

I did feel afterwards that something was missing, although it’s hard to put my finger on it: perhaps it’s as minor as a slight lack of sharpness in the lighting and the writing, subtle beats missed or held too long. Or perhaps I would have liked to see a tougher exploration of those gender questions, which remain vexed and pertinent 130 years after they were written.

This production made me wonder why so many young theatre artists here are obsessed with the 19th century. What is it about late romanticism or early modernism that is so sparking imaginations? As well as Venus in Furs, recently we’ve seen several productions, mainly courtesy of The Hayloft Project: they've mounted Platonov and Spring Awakening, and later this week I'm off to see Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale.

Aside from the obvious attractions of the beautiful language of these texts, it’s hard not to speculate that some kind of reclamation is taking place, a return to some of the nascent explorations that were blown apart by the catastrophic events of the 20th century, in particular the second world war. It’s not nostalgia I’m sensing here, but a certain curiosity, a certain desire, and I’m intrigued to see where it leads.

A shorter version of this review appeared in yesterday's Australian.