In The Next Room

or ... The Vibrator Play

What a stupid piece of shit. I have no idea what Sarah Ruhl was thinking beyond, "Wouldn't it be funny to have a Victorian play about a vibrator?" This play clocks in at around 2 hrs and 45 min. but only has about 30 minutes of worthy material. One could have taken at least two threads in the dialogue and made them into a more substantive theme. One line longed for the missing human warmth, connection and touch in an electronic world. Another character, the black nursemaid, went on an emotional purge about losing love to find it in nurturing another. But these moments, nor any others, came to fruition in this silly and trivial treatment of repressed sexuality and ignorance of feminine power.

A silly wife wonders what her husband does for his lady clients In The Next Room of their Victorian home. She hears such noises, pleasurable she thinks. It seems her husband has turned to Mr. Edison and electricity to develop a vibrator to help woman with their hysteria and to unblock the fluid in their womb. Through this gimmick, the audience endures repetitive scenes of how to get one female character off and in the second act, a male patient. Throw in the most insane and juvenile of masturbatory humor and it all turns frightfully stupid and one-noted. Ruhl threw in race relations and classism via a black wet nurse. Then she added lesbian longing, wifely roles, love triangles, artistic temperaments, and forbidden objects. It was all too much, way too much, for one play to manage. Even the ending, which I suppose the author saw as some sort of reclaiming of the doctor's wife's sexual and personal power sadly turned into male exploitation and female domination through whining and demanding. Bleck.

Obviously I was in an audience of middle-school minded morons. Snickers abound during the discussions and dialogue mentioning sex. Two groups of folks behind us talked chattily for 5 minutes after the start of the Second Act even after two SHHHHes and final one stern "SHUT UP ALREADY." from my companion. One woman even gasped like a shocked Catholic nun at the disrobing onstage of one character, as if nudity was verboten! Ugh! I expect more from a NYC crowd. Go watch some porn and get over it.