‘Venus’ Recalls a Woman’s Fortune, and Her Ruin
Ben BrantleyMay 15, 2017:
Attention, please, those of you whose greatest ambition is to acquire the traffic-stopping body of Kim Kardashian. There is a less drastic alternative to costly and dangerous buttocks implants.
To wit: the fulsomely padded body stocking that is being modeled with flair and poignancy by Zainab Jah in the title role of Suzan-Lori Parks’s “Venus,” which opened in a patchy revival on Monday night at the Pershing Square Signature Center. It’s doubtful as to how comfortable such a stocking is as 24-hour wear. But it has the great advantage of not being permanent.
Ms. Jah is portraying a once-famous figure whose form was her fortune — and her ruin. That’s Saartjie (or Sarah) Baartman, a South African-born woman celebrated and reviled in early-19th-century Europe as Venus Hottentot, presented as a sideshow novelty guaranteed to “dazzle, surprise, intrigue, horrify and disgust.”
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