In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play

photo: Joan Marcus

I've never much understood the appeal of Sarah Ruhl's plays, and in many ways, I still don't. They are all, by and large, the kind of twee and cerebral attempts at meta-comedy over which pretentious New York theatergoers cream themselves. Her retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, produced by Second Stage in 2007, remains one of the most agonizing evenings I have ever spent in a theatre. So it was under some duress that I attended her latest work (and Broadway debut), In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play, which was produced by Lincoln Center at The Lyceum Theatre. And while it's far from perfect, I am glad that I went, if for no other reason that the stellar performances. The ensemble, from top to bottom, is fantastic, with Laura Benanti revelatory in a rare non-musical outing. Her performance manages to be period-specific (the play is set in the 1880s) and forward looking all at once, and she is obviously having a ball delivering Ruhl's tongue-in-cheek double entendres. Michael Cerveris is terrific as her doctor husband, who plans to eradicate female hysteria with the help of the play's title instrument, and frequent Ruhl collaborator Maria Dizzia knocks it out of the park as his sexually repressed patient. The text itself is problematic--it's around a half-hour too long, with a failed coup-de-theatre at the end--but the caliber of acting makes it an extremely worthwhile experience.