THEATRE REVIEW: "The Vibrator Play" delivers satisfaction

Gordon Tanner and Melody A. Johnson (Bruce Monk)

We've come a long way since the Victorian age, baby... and yet Sarah Ruhl's comedy In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) seems to suggest that questions of intimacy versus modesty, and passion versus restraint, are universal. And while the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre Warehouse's production (co-produced with Toronto's Tarragon Theatre) may not quite produce toe-curling paroxysms of joy, it certainly delivers a pleasurable, and stimulating, show.

Ruhl's script takes us back to laced-up, buttoned-down Victorian era America - a time when sex was rarely spoken of and pleasures of the flesh were largely a mystery... but also a time when the advent of electricity made new things possible. In this setting, the ever-inquisitive Dr. Givings (Gord Tanner) experiments with a new device - a curious vibrating machine - which seems to produce miraculous cures for his female (and, occasionally male) patients suffering from "hysteria." Givings practices his "treatments" in his home operating room, while his neglected - and perplexed - wife Catherine (Trish Lindström) listens in the next room. "Sometimes they laugh and weep, all at the same time," she says of her husband's patients with confusion. "They often call for God."

That Givings is able to bring this curious mixture of pleasure and pain to patients like Mrs. Daldry (Melody A. Johnson), while ignoring the needs of his own wife, underscores Ruhl's message. In a period of fantastic repression, sexual release as a scientific pursuit is acceptable to Dr. Givings - but loving intimacy is not. Just as natural light becomes a mechanical process in this period thanks to Edison, Givings reduces the natural pleasure of sex to a mechanical process - while Catherine grows increasingly frustrated, knowing that she wants something, but unable to define what it is. And while laughs are had here at the prudish Victorians - and their reactions to the unnamable joy Givings' machine brings - Ruhl's beautiful conclusion suggests that we may not be so different today, in that only when we truly open ourselves to each other can we experience the joy of sex.

Ruhl's script is smart and sharp, offering realistic (if sometimes quirky) characters, plenty of laugh-out-loud moments (most are surprisingly PG given the subject matter), and also moments of poignancy, in the tragicomic disconnect between the characters and their bodies. There are standouts in the seven-person cast - as the "hysterical" Mrs. Daldry, Johnson's hilarious reactions to Givings' treatments are worth the price of admission alone. Local favourite Ross MacMillan brings a weird charm as her repressed husband, and Tanner delivers an appropriate touch of "mad scientist" as Dr. Givings. Lindström captures some wonderful comedic moments as Catherine, but plays her with an underlying intensity that keeps her at a distance from the audience - unfortunate given that she's the character here we should most sympathize with.

Director Richard Rose creates some wonderful tableaus on David Boechler's sumptuous Victorian set, often skillfully choreographing complementary scenes in two different rooms. But his direction sometimes has slightly too much Victorian restraint - the show's opening scene is a bit too subdued to immediately draw us in, and it feels the pacing doesn't quite hit its stride until the second act of the two-hour show.

So it may fall somewhat short of being electrifying. But In the Next Room buzzes with enough charm to gratify an audience.


Joff Schmidt (CBC Theatre Reviewer)