In the Next Room or the vibrator play
by Sarah Ruhl

Name: In the Next Room or the vibrator play
Brand: Sarah Ruhl
SKU: 9780573698132
Rating: 4.08 (3606 reviews)

Broadway

In the Next Room or the vibrator play Cover

In the Next Room or the vibrator play Book Cover — In the Next Room or the vibrator play Cover

Highlights

Female

Male

120 mins Victorian (British and American) Strong Role for Leading Man (Star Vehicle) Interior Set Period Costumes Comedy

Awards & Recognition

Pulitzer Prize Tony Award

Finalist: 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Drama Nominee: Three 2010 Tony Awards, including Best Play Winner! 2010 Will Glickman Award for Best New Play to Premiere in the Bay Area Sarah Ruhl is the 2003 recipient of the Whiting Award for Drama

Synopsis

In the Next Room or the vibrator play is a comedy about marriage, intimacy and electricity.

Set in the 1880s at the dawn of the age of electricity and based on the bizarre historical fact that doctors used vibrators to treat “hysterical” women (and some men), the play centers on a doctor and his wife and how his new therapy affects their entire household.

In a seemingly perfect, well-to-do Victorian home, proper gentleman and scientist Dr. Givings has innocently invented an extraordinary new device for treating “hysteria” in women (and occasionally men): the vibrator.

Adjacent to the doctor’s laboratory, his young and energetic wife tries to tend to their newborn daughter – and wonders exactly what is going on in the next room.

When a new “hysterical” patient and her husband bring a wet nurse and their own complicated relationship into the doctor’s home, Dr. and Mrs. Givings must examine the nature of their own marriage, and what it truly means to love someone.

Press Reviews

"Insightful, fresh and funny, the play is as rich in thought as it is in feeling… one of the most gifted and adventurous American playwrights to emerge in recent years… In the Next Room is a true novelty: a sex comedy designed not for sniggering teenage boys – or grown men who wish they were still sniggering teenage boys – but for adults with open hearts and minds."
— The New York Times

"If Henrik Ibsen and Oscar Wilde had decided to collaborate on a post-modern drawing-room comedy, the hotsy-totsy twosome surely would have turned out something very much like Sarah Ruhl’s genuinely hysterical new work."
— TheatreMania

"Sarah Ruhl… has written a smart, charming, iridescently funny-serious jewel… As Ruhl traces it with wit and insight, and without the slightest prurience, the birth of this new era gives rise to colorful events, astute psychological revelations and endearingly apt dialogue."
— Bloomberg

"The playwright mines her subject for suitably bawdy humor without resorting to vulgarity. But what really gives the work its distinction is its sensitive exploration of the physical and emotional repression suffered by the women of the era, which has yet to disappear entirely… The play beautifully balances its humor and pathos."
— Hollywood Reporter

Characters

Character	Gender	Age	Description
Catherine Givings His wife, a woman in her late twenties.	female	—	His wife, a woman in her late twenties.
Sabrina Daldry His patient, a woman in her early thirties.	female	—	His patient, a woman in her early thirties.
Annie A woman in her late thirties, Dr. Giving’s midwife assistant.	female	—	A woman in her late thirties, Dr. Giving’s midwife assistant.
Leo Irving Dr. Giving’s other patient, an Englishman in his twenties or thirties.	male	—	Dr. Giving’s other patient, an Englishman in his twenties or thirties.
Elizabeth An African American woman in her early thirties. A wet-nurse by default.	female	—	An African American woman in her early thirties. A wet-nurse by default.
Mr. Daldry Sabrina Daldry’s husband, a man in his forties or fifties.	male	—	Sabrina Daldry’s husband, a man in his forties or fifties.
Dr. Givings A man in his forties, a specialist in gynecological and hysterical disorders.	male	—	A man in his forties, a specialist in gynecological and hysterical disorders.