Sarah Ruhl is known to put some quirky, physically implausible things in her plays. In Eurydice, a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story, her characters enter a kind of purgatory where they lose their ability to read and write. But Eurydice's father communicates to her from the other side by writing letters, because he is the only dead person who can still write. In Dead Man's Cell Phone, the dead are more clearly present through the presence of a cell phone. In The Melancholy Play Ruhl introduces the idea of two twins separated at birth who are still psychically connected.Knowing this about Ruhl's work, I was curious to see what fantastical elements she would bring into her latest play In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play, which is having its DC premier at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre following a Broadway run last season at Lincoln Center. Curiously enough, the most transgressive thing about this play is all revealed in the title: the vibrator. Other than its insistent presence, The Vibrator Play follows a very traditional story arc in a commonly depicted time period.
It's the end of the Victorian age, and electricity is becoming more ubiquitous. The Givings are a well to do doctor (Eric Hissom) and his wife (Katie deBuys) who are embracing electricity both in their home and in the doctor's work. Mrs. Givings' slowly turning on and off of the lights in the opening scene is the first sign of electricity's vital role in the film and the late nineteenth century. Indeed, Dr. Givings has just purchased a new massage machine that's meant to relieve women of hysteria from build up in their wombs. Yes -- a vibrator.
With the help of his middle-aged midwife, Annie (Sarah Marshall), Dr. Givings begins to administer treatments to a housewife named Mrs. Daldry (Kimberly Gilbert) and an artist named Leo Irving (Cody Nickell). (That feat's thanks to the male version of a vibrator).
As Mrs. Daldry and Irving receive treatments, they let down their guards and reveal their problems to the audience. These problems are not very surprising. Mrs. Daldry is shy and doesn't feel enought; Irving, the free spirited artist he is, feels too much. We in the audience are also forced to get more comfortable with ourselves as we witness Mrs. Daldry's increasingly frequent orgasms. Her first one feels much longer than the three minutes it actually takes. Gilbert convincingly writes on the operating table like a sex novice. She even covers her mouth in embarrassment following the first few unseemly moans. After a few more sessions, though, Mrs. Daldry finds herself coming back for more voluntarily. She begins to dress more colorfully and behaves more confidently. Soon after both Mrs. Daldry and Leo Irving get so stimulated, their orgasms merely drift into the background of the play.
With the subject of sex and orgasms safely in the background, Ruhl draws our attention to the heart of the play: the Givingses' marriage. In some introductory remarks in the program, Ruhl writes that "I'm ultimately more interested in the relationships that expand around [the vibrator], and the whole notion of compartmentalization." Mrs. Givings is dismayed by how her husband separates his doctoring from her, as if she can't understand it, going so far as to lock the room when he leaves home. Mrs. Givings' curiousity gets the better of her, and she breaks in to the next room. Her discovery of the vibrator and break in illuminates a mutual breach of trust that the couple spend most of the play repairing.
While Ruhl makes the characters' motivations and actions perfectly clear, they are based on blunt characterizations. Mrs. Givings is too easily typed as the stifled romantic in Victorian times. Dr. Givings is too easily typed as the strict man of science who can never succumb to emotion. Only one of the Givingses convincingly changes by the end, but not until everyone has endured a lesson on how to see others for who they really are.
