"In The Next Room or the vibrator play"

     The existence of vibrators buzzing on stage does not, as one might hope, provide for much, um, "stimulation" in Sarah Ruhl's new play, In The Next Room or the vibrator play, being produced by Lincoln Center Theater at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway.  While various characters, mostly female, experience their first orgasms through mechanical means during the play, both they and the audience are left feeling pretty empty at the end.  

     Sarah Ruhl is a playwright I admire, and she's very much the "flavor du jour" these days in contemporary theatre.  I have no doubt that professional critics will, um, come all over themselves when they review the show.  (Okay, I have to stop with the sex metaphors, even if the show invites them.)  She was clearly very interested in the subject matter: a late 19th century doctor invented what he thought to be a cure for women's "hysteria" by administering an electrical vibrator to their vaginas and giving them an orgasm.  For almost all of the women, it was their first such experience with orgasm, since sex with their husbands (all but one is married) was for his pleasure and not expected to be pleasurable for women.

    So, what we see on stage is a woman patient, Mrs. Daldry, plus the doctor's wife, return again and again for "treatments."  To vary the otherwise one - gimmick premise, Ruhl has the doctor invent a similar device for men, and we get to see one, Leo, (an artist, naturally) received anal pleasure.  (Everyone is completely clothed for these "treatment" scenes.  This is, after all, the late 19th century, and Broadway, and those theatre patrons from the suburbs and out of town wouldn't want to be accused of seeing porn.) Variations include watching the women get "treatments," either from the doctor, or each other, or the nurse (our token lesbian in the show), or in the case of the doctor's wife, by herself.  Watching this action causes a titter in the audience, since after all, we are but one bodice away from porn.

     Adding to the discomfort is that the one African-American woman in the show, a wet nurse for the doctor's infant, is the only woman who has experienced orgasm with her husband.  The white women don't get off with their husbands; the black woman does, throwing  gender, class, and racial stereotyping into the mix.  I squirmed at what felt like racism to me.  But maybe I was just being too sensitive.

     After watching everyone "getting off," with the exception of the doctor and a husband of one of the women (oh, and the lesbian, of course, since they don't have sex, do they?), where to go?  Intimacy, of course, is what the doctor's wife seeks most, and throwing sex toys to the wind, she takes her husband outside on a snowy night, where he strips naked and makes love to her in the snow (after making a snow angel first, of course).  The greatest vibrator of all is LOVE.  Yawn.  Curtain.

    Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed watching this show on a number of levels.  The acting is uniformly wonderful, with Laura Benanti playing the doctor's wife with her musical theatre energy that lights up every stage she graces; Michael Cerveris is adorable as the doctor, pretending that his work is all so so so scientific; Wendy Rich Stetson plays the lesbian nurse Annie with a silent and subtle pain that's very affecting; and Quincy Tyler Bernstine plays the wet nurse Elizabeth with a solid confidence of being the only fully-realized woman in the show.  They're directed skillfully by Les Waters.

     Sets by Annie Smart and costumes by David Zinn nicely evoked the 1880s in which the play takes place.  The set is two rooms of the doctor's house: the livingroom, and the "next room" of the play's title, where the treatments take place, with a final outdoor non-realistic looking garden set spinning in for the final moments, all beautifully lit by Russell Champa.

     I know this play is trying to be important, and recognize that it's unusual and perhaps unique in dealing with sexuality in rather blunt terms for Broadway.  And I understand that feminist critics will be all over it like it's the Second Coming (no pun intended).  But in the end, when I left the theatre, I felt kind of empty.  You know, that feeling you get when you're done, with or without a vibrator, having had a good time, but wishing for something more.