“In The Next Room (Or The Vibrator Play)” – Actors Theatre
This review aired on KBAQ November 1, 2010
GLIBLY FUNNY “VIBRATOR” PLAY DEFTLY STAGED BY ACTORS THEATRE
“IN THE NEXT ROOM (OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY)”
Actors Theatre, Stage West, Herberger Theater Center
Phoenix, AZ
Sarah Ruhl’s “In the Next Room (Or The Vibrator Play)” takes a little known and funny scientific fact and cleverly couples it with late 19th century sexual inhibitions to craft a glibly funny play that is produced with deft comic delight by Actors Theatre.
We are at Dr. Givings’ house and office in a prosperous New York town during the 1880s. The good doctor has success in diagnosing and treating an ailment afflicting many women. Labeled “hysteria,” he describes it as a powerful collection of fluids and congestion. His revolutionary treatment uses newly invented electricity and a stimulation machine that relieves it. I hope listeners are avidly reading between the lines to figure out what can’t be bluntly stated.
Ruhl adds several other hilarious complications. The doctor’s wife who just had a baby sits in her parlor outside the doctor’s office where she listens with delight to the patients’ relief. She’s intrigued and tires to figure out what’s going on. When her inquisitive mind solves the puzzle she wants to try the cure. There’s even a dashing young man who also has the malady even though it’s rare in men. The doctor has developed another machine to cure men. Of course, the doctor’s wife forces her husband to understand facets of the female men ignored.
The play is loaded with subtle innuendo and things never get dirty. The discretely administered treatments leave audiences in stitches. Ruhl develops the situation expertly and her brightly amusing dialogue hits the prudent nail of this inhibited and closeted time on the head. It’s easy to see why this play attracted so much attention on Broadway last season.
But, it’s not just the play that works. It’s the expertly staged production under the delightful direction of Matthew Wiener that leaves audiences amused. Angelica Howland’s a hoot as Catherine, Dr. Givings’ wife. Her discoveries, her own inhibitions, her physical needs, and her carefully timed interruptions are hysterical. Francis Jue is an inhibited Dr. Givings who, in understated ways, slyly reveals his own delighted enjoyment in the malady and its solution. Erica Connell has a field day with uptight Sabrina, the doctor’s primary patient, while Cale Epps is dominate and commanding as her frustrated husband. The rest of the able cast provides their own comic glee. The production’s only failing is that these characters never really seem to be from the 1880s.
“In the Next Room (Or The Vibrator Play)” keeps the laughs rolling as Victorian inhibitions leave audiences delighted at how unconnected people in these times were with their own bodies. It continues through November 14. For tickets, call the Herberger Theater Center box office at 602-252-8497 or go online at www.actorstheatrephx.org.
Grade: B
(4/5)
