How does one write–for a St. Louis audience–about an interesting, unusual play that deals with sexual arousal among men and women of the late 19th century?
Very carefully, I would say. And yet. . . .
Sarah Ruhl's often-funny, sometimes-enlightening play, "In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play," opened last night at the Rep Studio, to run through March 27. It's a lot more than just a sexual romp or a titillating peek at orgasms and–yes, let's say it–masturbation, more than a century ago. Most importantly, it looks at mutual trust, and at the advantages of truth in the never-ending War Between the Sexes, even during marriage. Being in the late Victorian age (the setting is a small town in upstate New York in the 1880s, at the dawn of the commercial use of electricity), hampers honesty and openness, but the 1960s had to begin somewhere.
Stuart Carden's slick direction and Gianni Downs' brilliant set, with two separate rooms (this one and the next one, of course) crammed onto the minuscule Studio space, sometimes give it the feeling of a French bedroom farce, complete with slamming doors. The delightful, well-balanced cast, blessed by a counterpoint of the sighs, squeaks, squeals and sobs of approaching orgasm, does very nicely.
In the "operating theater," we have the electrical enthusiast Dr. Givings (Ron Bohmer), and his loyal red-haired nurse, Annie (a beautifully on-target Amy Landon). In the next room, the Givings' parlor, we have the chatterbox Mrs. Catherine Givings (Annie Purcell). Seeking cures for hysteria, visiting both rooms, are pale Mrs. Sabrina Daldrey (Emily Dorsch), her pompous husband, Mr. Daldrey (Michael James Reed) and a wild-eyed artist, Leo Irving (David Christopher Wells). Only in the parlor, and in an off-stage nursery, is stately Elizabeth (Krystel Lucas), the wet-nurse for the Givings' new baby.
The role of Elizabeth, by the way, did not work for me. Ruhl's use of an African-American woman, a generation after the Civil War, to explain the joy of sex to Mrs. Givings and Mrs. Daldrey is a distasteful re-telling of the myth that African-Americans were more sexually free and enjoyed making love far more than then the uptight white race. Lucas was a strong personality on the stage. The character of Leo the Artist came through as a total mess, though Wells had some of the best lines, like pointing out that if he loved fewer women he'd have been an illustrator, and if he loved more, he'd have been a poet.
Much of the action and the electrical stimulation was based on truth, from the days when Hysteria was a recognized illness. Ruhl just draws it out nicely for the Givingses and the Daldreys. St. Louis-born Purcell was outstanding, her desires and her overflowing joy and love of life erupting as regularly as Old Faithful. In terms of full disclosure, I've known her father, Tom, for close to 40 years, and wrote about him while he was the man in charge of rebuilding Laclede's Landing and much of rehab work along the levee. He looked very proud last night.
Emily Dorsch was exciting as Sabrina Daldrey, slender, pale and wan as a Robert Browning heroine, but right on as a woman who never has had an orgasm, but likes the idea very much, thank you. And if pomposity could be perfect, that was Reed as her husband.
Bohmer, both an actor and a singer at the Rep and across the country, was just right as the doctor who had invented the marvelous electric cure for Hysteria, but was unable to connect when it came time for his own sex life. But then, as he says, "What men do not observe because their intellect prevents them from seeing would fill many books."
I had a wonderful time last night, and I was reveling in the romantic, highly sexual aura provided in a scene with the Givingses. When I was a younger man, nothing excited me more than the fumblings with buttons and brassiere hooks and garter belts that girls used to wear. But when Bohmer finished with Purcell's garb, instead of stretching the suspense when it came to his own clothes, he finished with a quick pull on a zipper, about a half-century ahead of its invention.
In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play, a production of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, opened last night in the Studio Theatre, to run through March 27
—Joe