It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly there’s a knock on the door. All right, not so suddenly. First, there’s a cell phone conversation as playwright David Ives sets up the premise of his two-character play “Venus in Fur.” A director in a rehearsal hall is complaining after a day of auditioning actresses for the play he has adapted.

He hasn’t found a woman with sufficient intelligence and allure to play the part, not even one “who can pronounce ‘degradation’ without a tutor.” Degradation? Say, what kind of play is this, anyway?

Well, the play within the play, also called “Venus in Fur,” is based on the (real) novel of the same name by the 19th- century Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose name and predilections gave us the word masochism. (Trivia note that has nothing to do with play: Sacher-Masoch was the great-great uncle of singer Marianne Faithfull.)

So. It is the evening of the day, and on the stage at Performance Network director Thomas (played by Sebastian Gerstner) has just about given up hope when there is that knock on the door. In walks Vanda (Maggie Meyer), bedraggled and desperate to read for the part. She seems an unlikely candidate: She has a heavy New York accent and a low opinion of the novel (she calls it porn, he calls it a serious work of art). But she does have the same name as the female lead, she’s wearing a dog collar and leather lingerie under her raincoat, and she has a copy of the script, which nobody is supposed to have. Things are about to get interesting.

Ives’ play is a comedy plus. No, there’s nothing missing from that sentence. That play is funny, at times hilariously so, but it has a darker, deeper side. (Not that comedy can’t be deep, but that’s a discussion for another day.) Besides the obligatory question, “What is reality?” that crops up any time there’s a play within a play, the ideas in “Venus in Fur” come so quickly that they can’t be processed as they arrive.

Is Vanda real (within the confines of the outer play), or is she the product of Thomas’ imagination? Or is he somehow the creature of hers? Is Ives telling us that devotion to your art makes you a slave? In a dominant-submissive relationship, who is really in control?

No matter. Ask and ponder questions at your leisure and just enjoy “Venus in Fur,” because there’s a prodigious amount of enjoyment packed into 90 intermissionless minutes.

Maggie Meyer is simply terrific, making a demanding role look easy. She performs seamless and instant changes, going in an eye-blink from the New York actress in the outer play to the refined, dangerously seductive woman of the inner – and back again, and back the other way. Sebastian Gerstner is fine in the less flashy role of the director-adapter who finds himself both author of and character in his own play.

Jennifer Graham, the real director of the Performance Network production, has her two actors convincing us that they have no idea what’s going to happen next. You can’t ask for much more than that, except perhaps for costume designer Suzanne Young’s black leather getup. Is it hot in here or is it just me?