2011: In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl

In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl.  Sydney Theatre Company at Canberra Playhouse, directed by Pamela Rabe.  June 8-11, 2011

Reviewed by Frank McKone
June 8

Only two years after its first production at Berkeley Rep, it’s good to see Sydney put on a play described by one of its first commentators (Rachel Swan in the East Bay Express) as ‘a pretty progressive play, even by 2009 standards’.  I am sure that most of the Canberra audience last night was much more sophisticated than I am, and their delight in this rare kind of comedy suggests they are pretty progressive too.  At interval a friend asked if I had “learnt anything new”.  It was a trap question, of course, so I mumbled vaguely rather than reveal my ignorance.

I’ll return later to the play and its writer, because there’s lots there to think about. 

But I want to begin by praising Pamela Rabe, and her cast Jacqueline McKenzie (Catherine Givings – the vibrator’s wife), David Roberts (Dr Givings – the vibrator), Helen Thomson (Sabrina Daldry – the first to be vibrated), Marshall Napier (Mr Daldry – her non-vibrant husband), Mandy McElhinney (Annie – the vibrator’s assistant and a vibrator in her own right), Sara Zwangobani (Elizabeth – the wet nurse who understands) and Josh McConville (Leo Irving – the artist and the second to be vibrated).

Equally praiseworthy is the designer, Tracy Grant Lord and her team led by Hartley T A Kemp (Lighting Designer), Iain Grandage (Composer/Sound Designer), Laura A. Proietti (Wigs, Hair & Make Up Supervisor), and Charmian Gradwell (Voice & Text Coach).  A large part of the particular success of this production was how the set, costumes, hair-dos, lights and sound gave the actors exactly the environment to allow their characters to spark.

And spark they certainly did, in more ways than one.  Being a bit too much like Dr Givings myself, I loved the moment when he sees that Mrs Daldry needs an extra boost, turns the vibrator up to maximum and blows every Edison light in the house.  Isn’t it great to be a technician?

Each actor had strengths with no noticeable weak points, so none can be honestly awarded more praise than any other in such a tight ensemble, but there were special moments for me. 

One was the depth of character expressed by Sara Zwangobani as Elizabeth announces her decision to leave Catherine’s employ as a wet nurse – such bitterness held in check by her maturity of understanding took this role far beyond a matter of simple racist discrimination.  Her speech opened up the whole issue of universal human rights.

At the other end of the scale was the brief exit of Marshall Napier’s Mr Daldry as he realises that he has to walk out to see Catherine’s garden and leave her and his wife alone together.  Perhaps he is mainly responding to Catherine’s vivacity, but he also recognises Sabrina’s new-found sense of authority.  Probably he can’t explain to himself why he should go, but he knows he must.

These are only two examples which show why I am so pleased to see a modern play offer the actors the opportunity for such finesse.  This brings me to the play itself.

One commentator mentioned that the set is deliberately similar to that of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and I found myself thinking of another playwright also influenced by Ibsen: George Bernard Shaw, still famous in the popular mind today for Pygmalion and its musical version My Fair Lady.  Shaw was a progressive playwright in his day.  He didn’t mention vibrators but he wrote about attitudes towards women’s sexuality in 1892 only a decade or so after the technically advanced Americans in Ruhl’s play were discovering how to treat hysteria with ‘paroxysms’.  In Mrs Warren’s Profession Shaw wrote a comedy about Mrs Warren’s Cambridge educated daughter being horrified to find that her mother financed her daughter’s education by running a brothel.

Mrs Warren’s Profession was banned by the Lord Chamberlain because of its ‘frank discussion and portrayal of prostitution’, getting its first production after 10 years in the members-only New Lyric Club in 1902 and waiting for its first public performance in London until 1925.  Interestingly, ‘it had a performance in New York, this time on a public stage in 1905, [which] was interrupted by the police who arrested the cast and crew, although it appears only the house manager of the theatre was actually charged.[citation needed] The play has been revived on Broadway five times since, most recently in 2010.’  [Wikipedia accessed 9 June 2011]

Well, how does Ruhl compare to Shaw?  First, however progressive she may be, it seems that the re-enactment of orgasms on stage has not caused the arrest of the cast and crew, despite present-day public concerns about pornography.  Maybe this is because Ruhl has set her play in the prudish Victorian era in the past (now 130 years ago), whereas Shaw’s play was set in his own time – the actual prudish Victorian era.  In the official 1912 Constable edition, Shaw’s preface, called The Author’s Apology, made no apology at all for refusing to write a conventional sentimental romantic comedy and having his characters speak and behave as real people would.

Ruhl, in re-creating the language of the past era, has written at least as cleverly as the famous wordsmith Shaw.  Her comedy grows from the fact that her characters avoid direct description, yet we know today exactly what they mean.  Shaw’s comedy drew on characters saying exactly what they mean in a society that wishes they didn’t.  The one quote, of course, which has come down to us from Shaw is Eliza’s innocent exclamation in Pygmalion: ‘Not bloody likely.’  

So one thing I learnt from In the Next Room or the vibrator play is that Sarah Ruhl well deserves the prizes she has been awarded (Glickman Prize and finalist for Pulizter Prize), and that she is writing in a tradition which I find thoroughly satisfying.

© Frank McKone, Canberra