In The Next Room, or The Vibrator Play

New York writer Sarah Ruhl didn’t want her play about antique vibrators dismissed as just a sex farce, so she added “In the Next Room…” to the title.  It all happens there in the 1880’s clinic and home of Dr Givings who successfully uses the new electric vibrators to relieve female hysteria “and get the juices moving downward.” 

Apparently vibrators were one of the earliest appliances to use the magic of electricity so celebrated by the frosty Dr Givings. 

Meanwhile between visitors in their plush living room, a manic Mrs Catherine Givings (Sarah Greenwood) believes she herself needs a treatment for what is clearly sexual frustration.  She befriends Mrs Daldry (Lisa Kelly), who is transformed by her many visits from cowering agoraphobic to flamboyant pianist, and flirts with an inconstant male artist (Luke Visentin) whose own hysteria is being treated by a far larger mechanical phallus.  But no one equate all this with sex.

Emma Whitehead’s impressively restrained production captures this remarkable 19thCentury innocence – and repression – of female sexuality.  Even Dr Givings (Riley Thomas) needs to be coached by his wife to sexual and bodily fulfilment, which is the main arc of the play.  Mr Daldry (Lewis McLeod) is impeccably formal and also clueless.

Catherine’s bodily disjuncture is obvious too in her reliance on an Afro-American wet nurse Elizabeth (Ruva Shoko) to feed her new baby.  Having lost her son, Elizabeth reveals new meanings to the nature of love across race, class and religion.   Alyona Popova’s cool and efficient nurse, confused only when she falls for Mrs Daldry while administering the vibrator, rounds out a uniformly outstanding, and measured cast.

They move effortlessly between rooms on veteran designer Tom Bannerman’s attractive period set, smoothly carrying our focus. Alicia Badger’s welcome array of lighting, amongst all this talk of electricity, aids these shifts, and Hugo Fraser’s costumes serve period and character, as does Whitehead’s control and detailed eye.  

Aided by a straight delivery, Ruhl’s play has much humour when its leans into that sex farce and, while lacking some depth of feminist thought, is an outstanding night at the New.

Highly recommended.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Bob Seary