You don’t easily forget a play with the word “vibrator” in the title, do you? That must have been the intent of author Sarah Ruhl. The noted playwright could easily have played up this title with a series of cheap laughs. However, she rewards us with a play that is as much about electricity, history and relationships as it is about sex.
In the Next Room, or the vibrator play opened at Lincoln Center in New York in 2009. Until now, the closest it has come to Milwaukee was a critically acclaimed production that played last fall at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater. The Milwaukee production, under the direction of Laura Gordon, is a co-production with the Actors Theatre of Louisville. From reading critical notices, one guesses that it falls short of the New York and Chicago productions.
In the Next Room … is set in the Victorian era, at the dawn of electricity and, for some, sexual awareness. In her historically accurate portrayal, Ruhl combines both elements to wondrous effect. As the play begins, a beautifully dressed Victorian woman is cradling an infant in her arms. She muses about her home’s newly installed electric lights. The ability to turn on a table lamp at the flick of a switch seems remarkable to her, and as she speaks, she goes through the lamp’s on-off sequence in quick succession. She wonders what life will be like without the flickering glow of candles. In the next room (the two-room set is separated by a wooden door) is her husband’s medical “operating theater.” The husband is a physician who specializes in the treatment of “hysteria” in women (and occasionally, in men). One prospective female patient enters, accompanied by her husband. It is he, not she, who does most of the talking about her symptoms. The audience, of course, knows why his wife is prone to weeping, distraction and other “odd” behavior. This knowledge sparks much of the play’s humor.
The doctor tells the husband that, after relatively few “treatments” with his new, electrically powered surgical tool, his wife will be back to her old self. The husband, visibly relieved, leaves the room to allow the “treatment” to begin. The playwright has a lot of fun demonstrating how the “treatment” device is applied. At first, the woman is terrified that she might be electrocuted by the clunky, handheld device. It looks much like an electric drill with a rubber tip attached to it. The doctor, a serious man of science, reassures her of the procedure’s safety. He says the entire episode “should take no more than three minutes.” It seems to take longer than that for the poor woman to remove her voluminous clothing and whalebone corset. A female nurse gives her a reassuring smile as she assists the doctor. As the woman begins to writhe, moan and shudder on the “operating table,” the doctor doesn’t raise an eyebrow. He is completely detached from what is happening, literally, under his nose. For him, there is no mental connection between his medical treatments and sexual pleasure. In fact, he would be shocked if anyone would propose such an idea. His patients are ill, and he tries to make them feel better.
In the next room, the wife is fretting over her inability to provide her child with enough milk. She blames herself on being a “bad mother” who cannot properly care for her child. After consulting with her husband, they hire a wet nurse. The woman, a shy servant who works at a neighbor’s home, recently lost her own baby to cholera. She still has plenty of milk and, reluctantly, agrees to become the baby’s nurse. In a scene that speaks volumes in its silence, the mother, baby and wet nurse start the first feeding. The mother’s anguish is so visible that the nurse asks to feed the baby in its nursery.
Ruhl is making a point about hunger – sexual or otherwise – and how these women feel constrained by their husbands and society. When the wife complains about her boredom, her clueless husband wonders why having a husband, a home and a baby aren’t enough?
The entire set is beautifully constructed, with a lavishly appointed Victorian waiting room on one side and a clinically accurate doctor’s office on the other. However, the most important element is the door between them. In a way, it represents the “door to knowledge” through which women are prevented from entering. When the doctor leaves his office, he locks it and takes the key with him to the “club.” His increasingly frustrated wife cannot contain her curiosity. With the assistance of a hatpin supplied by one of the doctor’s patients, she pries open the lock. She soon learns that she has opened a Pandora’s Box as well. The two women, with girlish giggles, try out what is now considered a “sex toy.” Still, they cannot connect the dots between the sensations they feel in the doctor’s office with marital relations. Later, they quiz the wet nurse about their mixed feelings. She surmises the situation and delicately asks whether the sensations are similar to the feelings they have when they are intimate with their husbands. The women react with stunned silence, followed by raucous laughter. The idea seems preposterous to them. They are as unprepared to deal with this reality as they are to deal with a world full of electricity.
While this scenario sounds ripe for delicious fun, the cast often misses the mark. Some of the actors overplay their parts. One of them, who plays an artist just returned from faraway Italy, almost seems detached from his character altogether. True, this is a play about emotional detachment. But perhaps director Laura Gordon has taken this notion too far.
The play’s focus begins to unravel near the end, when, in fact, it should be coming to – excuse the expression – a climax. During the performance this reviewer attended, the audience began visibly shifting in its seats (always a bad sign). The too-perfect ending didn’t seem plausible. This show is a rare “miss” for Gordon, a talented local director and actress.
Yet, the show had other charms. The costumes are absolutely stunning. The set is rendered with authentic detail, as if it had been borrowed, intact, from a Victorian street scene in the Milwaukee Public Museum.
On a final note, some authentic Victorian-era vibrators were displayed in the theater’s lobby. Those who took the time to view the scary-looking devices were amused to see that one of them came from Milwaukee. It was manufactured by Oster Company, which later gained fame for making electric blenders.
