And a Broadway goddess

Director Walter Bobbie and David Ives flank Nina Arianda. At Tuesday's opening of David Ives' "Venus in Fur," Manhattan Theater Club's Lynne Meadow trumpeted the fact that the play is the first by the prolific scribe to open on Broadway.But the comedy starring Nina Arianda and Hugh Dancy is still, like a lot of others by Ives, an adaptation -- in this case of a 19th century erotic novel that led to the coining of the term "sado-masochism."Indeed, Ives has become the go-to guy for comic adaptations lately with a string of updates of Moliere, Corneille, Regnard and others."The story is always the hardest thing," he said at BB Kings. "When you adapt, someone just hands you a great story. They've done three-quarters of the work for you. All you have to do is run with it."