Vibrator Play: Pleasure without the piqué

In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play, at ACT through Aug. 28, is a farce about sexual satisfaction. Cloaked in the artifice of a 19^th-century period piece—lavish costumes, hyper-real stage design—this play creates a wacky, winky world in which to explore the politics of gender, sex and electricity.

Here’s what happens: A doctor invents a gizmo to relieve women and, rarely, men of hysteria. His obsession with electricity bores his wife but thrills his patients. Said wife (Jennifer Sue Johnson) has just given birth to their first child and is struggling with motherhood. Enter the patients—the sexy but dangerous painter, the childless prude, the butch midwife, the doofy old guy and the grieving black wet nurse—who collide to shed light on one another’s lives.

Brave performances by Jennifer Sue Johnson and Deborah King put Meg Ryan’s When Harry Met Sally orgasm to shame, though the tone of the direction was inconsistent—swinging back and forth between poignant and slapstick in a way that left me feeling unsure about the seriousness of the subject matter. For all of its lovely observations about beauty, light and love, the play lobbed an equal measure of easy, dirty jokes. One moment I was savoring a modern interpretation of the Madonna and child; the next I was being pummeled by an endless series of goofy one-liners.

The result was a courageous crowd-pleaser with a message. Yet, despite immaculate writing by Sarah Ruhl (who has earned significant critical praise for this work), The Vibrator Play feels too much like a relic from less progressive times. Though its themes remain very germane to today’s world, its comedic conceits are too cute and sweet for a young feminist accustomed to candor.