Description

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.

Director's Note

I didn't know what to expect when I first read The Vibrator Play but I was immediately drawn into its antiquated world, complex characters, and hilarious dialogue. I tend to avoid plays about medical issues. They give me anxiety. But The Vibrator Play isn't about a mysterious illness or the burden of mortality. It's about people. People who are suffering and want to feel better. Perhaps what they need is not a vibrator but love, understanding, and compassion.
Over the past month and a half, the cast has worked very hard to bring these incredible characters to life. I am honored and humbled by their dedication. Every rehearsal was filled with laughter. I am thankful for the opportunity to work with such great performers.
I must also thank the crew who spent countless hours making costumes, gathering props, building the set, and running lights and sound. They are the unseen heroes of this, and any, production.
 I hope you enjoy our play.

Credits

Director
Lighting Design
Set Design
Costume Design
Properties Design
Producer
Dr. Givings
Catherine Givings
Sabrina Daldry
Mr. Daldry
Annie
Elizabeth
Leo Irving
Scenic Artists
Light & Sound Board Operators
Shop Foreman
Master Electrician
Costume Shop Foreman
Poster & Program Art
House Manager Coordinator

Reviews

In the Next Room offers good vibes at Black Box
- Megan McQueen, Las Cruces Bulletin

Few plays brilliantly tie together multiple thought-provoking themes. Fewer elicit consistent laughter. No Strings Theatre Company’s production of Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play does both.

How do we reconcile our own needs with another’s needs? How does technology alter human behavior? Can one person be expected to be everything to us? How can we be swirling in such profound thoughts while also swept up in laughter?

Though I’ve seen this play in multiple productions in multiple cities, I still found myself leaning forward in my seat with excitement over how these characters’ wants collide.

Don’t be put off by the title. While the plot centers on a doctor treating women with hysteria via a vibrator in the 1880s, it’s no more scandalous than Meg Ryan’s famous faked climax in a deli (in the film “When Harry Met Sally”). Director Joshua Taulbee wisely managed staging and designs that are suggestive but not quite realistic.

While this play presents many challenges that intimidate professional directors and theater companies, this team manages them well. An actor plays piano effectively enough. The demands of the period set, costumes and props are met with obvious care. The set is quite beautiful and each new costume was a delight as the play progressed. The required interplay between ongoing action in both the doctor’s office and parlor is remarkably timed. I often found myself appropriately forgetting one side of the action was occurring because I was so entranced by the other.

The ensemble is fantastic. Each of the seven cast members explores the complexities of the story respectfully.

As Dr. Givings, a specialist in gynecological concerns, William Harrold is appropriately serious, stiff and, though oblivious, not uncaring. As his troubled wife, Rachel Thomas-Chappell’s training is obvious as she embodies curiosity, frustration, playfulness, flirtation, yearning and so much more.

The contradictions within every character are scripted exquisitely, and they were brilliantly inhabited by three actors in particular. Rachel Maze plays Leo with a Jack Sparrow-ian charm and unpredictability. Lisa Taylor’s Elizabeth is warm but remains businesslike until she cracks open with a sensational, unforgettable monologue. Cassandra Galban is perfection as Mrs. Daldry, an overwrought patient. She imbues each word with incredible sincerity and every movement with a mix of honest awkwardness and grace. Interplay between the wives was positively delectable.

While it isn’t uncommon that the performers frequent a certain stage in any town, it is notable that the properties designer, scenic artist, board operators and lighting designer take evident pride in their creative tasks on show after show at this theater.

It is remarkable that the production was so well rehearsed considering that Taulbee, as director and set designer, also had to step into a role during tech week. It was just another challenge he managed admirably.

Whether you attend theatre regularly or not, if you’ve read this far, I urge you to make it to this play. Take a friend whose thoughts you want to investigate. Plan for pie and a discussion afterwards. When I commended producers Ceil and Peter Herman for choosing to take a risk with this work, she said, “It shouldn’t be a risk. It’s a great play.” And yet, attending even great plays is often a risk in community theaters. Please take that risk with this one.

In the Next Room or the vibrator play continues its run at the Black Box Theatre, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through May 5, 2024, with an additional performance on Thursday May 2. For more information, or to purchase tickets, visit the website at No-Strings.org.

There’s Always Something Happening in The Next Room
- Nick Heeb, Freelance Reviewer

The doors weren’t left open at the No Strings Black Box Theater on Saturday, but a new wind blew in all the same. In the Next Room or the Vibrator Playopened this weekend as a testament to the courage of the Black Box theater directors to put on a play that pushes the boundaries of what theater can (and perhaps should) be in Las Cruces.
The play, with its elaborate and decadent set designed by Joshua Taulbee (who also directs AND acts) draws in the audience from the first moment. Gorgeous lilac-colored walls on the set which incorporates two rooms. One is a sitting room, while the other is an “operating theater” of one Dr. Givings. What does Dr. Givings give? A certain relief (and release) to patients—mostly female—who struggle with “hysteria”.
It is the 1880s, and electricity is all the rage. Thomas Edison is the most popular man in America, and all kinds of new technology has arrived with the advent and spread of electricity in the home. Dr. Givings has a regular set of clients to whom he administers electric stimulation. This stimulation results in a “paroxysm”, thereby curing the patient of nerves and other ailments.
Dr. Givings’ main patient is Sabrina Daldry, played to neurotic perfection by Cassandra Galban. Sabrina, who suffers from sensitivity to light, cold, and certainly many more ailments, has been sent to Dr. Givings by her clueless husband (Taulbee), who has his eyes on Dr. Givings’ rambling, musically inclined, and lonely wife, Catherine.
Catherine has just given birth, but her milk is dried up. She and Dr. Givings decide to hire out a wet nurse, Elizabeth—who is the maid for the Daldrys. Elizabeth, who has just lost her own child, decides to take on the job for the extra pay, despite the great wound she has suffered from her recent loss.
And so the stage is set. Dr. Givings, played with an intelligent deadpan perfection by William Harrold, administers the treatment to his patients with the help of assistant Annie (played by a wonderfully expressive Dezz Martin). In the first act, the only patient we see is Sabrina, and it soon becomes apparent the treatment is working. However, the treatment seems only to work when Annie is administering the treatment, and, at that, sometimes manually. Hmmm.
Catherine, meanwhile, is in the next room, entertaining guests, as well as fretting over her child. She seems to like Elizabeth, played by a reticent and tone-perfect Lisa Taylor, but fears losing her own child’s love. Elizabeth, meanwhile, fears that she will come to love the child, despite her own determination to loathe it. This sets up multiple fascinating—and eventually, devastating—exchanges between the two women.
Things become even more complex when Leo Irving, an artist shows up. Leo is the rare case of a male receiving treatment. Dr. Givings uses a special “Chattanooga Vibrator” to help Leo with his own struggles with hysteria. The treatment, let’s say, works. But Leo becomes sucked into the mess when Catherine begins to fancy him. Irving is played by Rachel Maze, who channels a sort of Johnny Depp-like weirdness to portray the tortured artist. Maze’s hand gestures and contorted physicality breathe exciting life into the character of Irving, and Maze does a great job of pulling back right before reaching the point of caricature.
In the Next Room is really an ensemble piece, but Catherine, played by Rachel Thomas-Chappell, is the main circuit the electricity of the play runs through. She is lonely, she is angsty, she is ignored. Thomas-Chappell is excellent, giving Catherine a depth of feeling, especially when putting on the niceties expected of a wife in the 1880s. Despite all the electricity running through the house, all the electric outlets, she struggles to find connection. She fears her child doesn’t love her. Her husband largely pays her no attention. The advances of Mr. Daldry disgust her. Even when she is caught caressing Leo Irving, Dr. Givings responds in a clinical manner, and nothing more. Thomas-Chappell plays Catherine perfectly, exhibiting the overwhelming sadness she feels in a masked, nuanced way.
How all these many threads (and there are many) tie together at the end will have the audience leaving both happy and heartbroken. Mr. Taulbee should be commended on undertaking this play, getting dedicated and dynamic performances from his players, who light the stage in a way that would make Mr. Edison himself proud.

Seating