The McGill Department of English’s production of Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) is all about electricity. The play takes the audience to early 20th century Saratoga Springs, New York, a time when on-off switches were a technological marvel, a Victorian-level of propriety was imposed on every conversation, and women suffered from elusive bouts of ‘hysteria.’ Dr. Givings (Anurag Choudhury), a man of science and a Thomas Edison fan-boy, has just the thing to treat such an illness. He sees patients in his home ‘operating theatre,; and the electric vibrator he employs clears ‘congestion of the womb’ that hysteria patients were thought to have suffered from. To Dr. Givings, the female orgasm is a clinical treatment.
Things are not so simple for his young wife, the vivacious Catherine (Sophia Metcalf), who is physically unable to breastfeed their new baby, and spends her days in the parlour feeling guilty and neglected by her husband. When her insatiable curiosity is heightened by boredom, Catherine makes it her mission to find out what exactly is going on in the next room. The cast of characters that stroll in and out of her living room—urse Anna (Jacqueline Geday), impassioned artist Leo Irving (Nathaniel Hanula-James), wet nurse Elizabeth (Sandrine Jaumard), and the loveless couple Mr. and Mrs. Daldry (Tom Gould and Clara Nizard)—begin to elucidate Catherine’s understanding of her husband’s practice. As the characters’ lives interweave and complicate, each one begins to feel the connective, arousing power of electricity, both externally and bodily.
The Vibrator Play provides a charming critique of Victorian notions of female desire, modernity, and motherhood. Although Ruhl’s writing is light and entertaining, there aren’t as many laugh out loud moments as might be expected in a play focused on such subject matter. Still, the The McGill Department Of English’s cast acts superbly. Most notable performances are Nizard’s gentle, discerning Mrs. Daldry, a fragile woman slowly learning herself, as well as Hanula-James’ Leo, a desperately romantic, physically unrestrained painter. Metcalf does an enthralling job bringing life and poignancy to some of Ruhl’s more complicated and philosophical monologues, and in scenes between Metcalf and Choudhury viewers can almost feel the aching between Mrs. and Dr. Givings’ experience.
The costumes, designed by Catherine Bradley and the McGill Costume Class, were impeccable—perfectly evocative of the Gilded Age era of the play, from the intricate, braided coifs, right down to the bloomers and corsets. On top of this, the props (crewed by Linna Nam, Tutu Cheng, and Yasmin Bitar)—specifically the overstated switches, buttons, and levers flipped and pushed in the operating theatre—create an interesting juxtaposition to the ornate Victorian parlour designed by Corinne Deeley. The set conveys the strange encounter of modernity and antiquity, found in the turn-of-the-century home.
In Director Myrna Wyatt Selkirk’s program note, she states that the production process has been one of “allowing our fingers to wrap around the corset laces of daily life and find the strength to break free of the cords that once bound us.” This is certainly what /In the Next Room/ achieves; it is a play that gets right to the underclothes of Victorian decency, and is a reminder that innovation always starts with breaking the rules.
The Vibrator Play runs from Nov. 26 – Nov. 28 at 7:30 p.m. in Moyse Hall. Tickets are $10.
