Venus Brings the Worst First Date Ever to Woolly Mammoth Theatre
Woolly Mammoth Theatre opens its 2026-2027 season with the Washington DC premiere of Venus, a dark comedy by Steve Yockey running September 9 through October 4. The production is a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, arriving in DC after earlier stagings in Atlanta and Dallas earned enthusiastic notices.
Sometimes the scariest part of dating is what you bring with you. Nicole likes things orderly: clean dating profiles, curated apartments, clear exits. Beth is all instinct, showing up uninvited to book club, sending too many flowers, and whisking Nicole off to a midnight date under the stars. What begins as an intoxicating collision of opposites turns bizarre as romance descends into obsession, fear takes on a life of its own, and both women find themselves haunted by a woman in a red raincoat.
Yockey, known to television audiences as the creator of The Flight Attendant, has built the play around a deceptively simple premise: two women recounting the story of a first date gone spectacularly, catastrophically wrong. Critics at earlier productions have called the script funny, engaging, and a bit shocking in a bold and refreshing way, praising its witty quips and charged banter alongside a searing commentary on the difficulty of finding true connection in the modern world. Reviewers have noted how the play takes perfectly normal dating anxieties and blows them up to extreme proportions, revealing the destruction possible when the fears of modern life get in the way of forming earnest connections. Beneath the absurdist comedy is a story about the fear of loneliness versus the fear of vulnerability, and the desperate measures both can inspire.
The two-hander runs approximately 90 minutes without intermission and rewards audiences who enjoy their romantic comedies with a sharp twist of the surreal. Venus runs September 9 through October 4 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D Street NW in Washington DC. Tickets are available at woollymammoth.net.