Picking up good vibrations 'In the Next Room'
Photo credit: Handout | Michael Cerveris and Laura Benanti in "In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play," in previews at the Lyceum Theatre in Manhattan.
'In the Next Room or the vibrator play" is a great big idea with a mildly amusing play tacked onto it. The comedy is more substantial and less self-consciously whimsical than the three previous Sarah Ruhl plays that also have been luxuriously produced in New York in the past three years. But I still wish I understood the appeal.
We are in the properly overdecorated Victorian home-office of Dr. and Mrs. Givings (the daring and playful Michael Cerveris and Laura Benanti). It is the dawn of the age of electricity, but still the dark ages of female sexuality. In the parlor, the bright but infantilized Mrs. Givings babbles to patients, hates herself for being unable to nurse her newborn and plays with the newfangled electric lamp.
And in the next room, well, the good doctor is treating unhappy women with the newest labor-saving device, the electric vibrator, meant to cure "hysterical" symptoms more efficiently than the old-style manual massage. Not surprisingly, Mrs. Givings is curious about happy noises coming from her scientist-husband's "operating theater" and wants him to "cure" her, too.
For the first several orgasms, including one by the rare hysterical male (an artist, naturally, played by Chandler Williams), Ruhl and director Les Waters present the tricky material with historical veracity - and the healthy giddiness of a dirty little joke. About halfway through, alas, the characters start spinning way out of the credibility zone, while the moans and shrieks become as old as Meg Ryan's deli scene in "When Harry Met Sally."
Instantly cured, giggly women can't wait to get out of their corsets and bustles (gorgeous costumes by David Zinn) and sneak back onto the table, alone or together. The uptight Mrs. Daldry (Maria Dizzia) very nearly finds both love and sex in a world beyond her clueless husband (Thomas Jay Ryan).
As in Ruhl's "The Clean House" (handsomely produced, like this one, by the Lincoln Center Theater) wisdom is delivered by the only minority character. This time, the earthy profundities are supplied by the black wet nurse (played with fascinating quiet by Quincy Tyler Bernstine).
Finally, Dr. Givings is provoked to throw off the corsets of scientific inquiry for a moment of literal nakedness. Hate to be a buzz kill, but the play fakes its climax.
WHAT "In the Next Room or the vibrator play"
WHERE Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th St.
INFO $51.50-$96.50; 212-239-6200; lct.org
BOTTOM LINE Big idea, minor play
