The couple sitting next to me at the Lyceum Theater, long-time subscribers to Lincoln Center Theater, looked embarrassed, nearly stricken, at the end of what playwright Sarah Ruhl originally called simply “the vibrator play,” a theatrical trifle that has generated a lot of puns about buzz. The characters are certainly embarrassed, and so reportedly are at least some of the actors.

But why be embarrassed if “In The Next Room, or the vibrator play” is — as its creator and others associated with this production have maintained in interviews and essays — a play about love, not sex toys, a play that Ruhl says is as “innocent” as its 19th century characters?

Ruhl brings us into the home of Dr. Givings and his wife in a well-appointed Victorian home in “a prosperous spa town outside of New York City, perhaps Saratoga Springs” at “the dawn of the age of electricity.” The doctor works out of an office in his home, an “operating theater” that his assistant refers to euphemistically as “the next room” so as not to disturb their nervous patients.

His practice is the treatment of hysteria, mostly but not entirely in women. He does this with the latest of medical technology. Yes, that kind of vibrator, although the nineteenth century versions were cumbersome electrical machines that the characters in the play at various times compare to a farm implement or a sewing machine.

Dr. Givings sees himself as a modern scientist, and his effort to bring relief to his patients is well-meaning and, to his mind, completely non-sexual – his name is a clue to his intentions, even as his wife, Mrs. Givings, in the course of the play indeed starts to express misgivings.

Ruhl has said that she has based the play on historical fact, and the Playbill has a page-long program note from dramaturg Anne Cattaneo about the history of orgasms and the 19th century attitude towards vibrators, surely a first for Lincoln Center.

Commissioned by Berkeley Rep, which is becoming something of a feeder theater for Broadway – “Wishful Drinking” this year, “Passing Strange” last year, and probably Green Day’s “American Idiot” next year – “In The Next Room” could not hope for a better production. Annie Smart’s set is a credible facsimile down to the wallpaper, costume designer David Zinn’s bustles, corsets, vested suits and gloves seem exactly right. The acting is uniformly spot-on, precise and believable – no broad winking — from a cast of seven, made up of both well-known Broadway names Laura Benanti (Tony-winner for Gypsy; Into the Woods; The Sound of Music) as Mrs. Givings and Michael Cerveris (Sweeney Todd; Assassins; Titanic) as Dr. Givings and such Off-Broadway mainstays as Quincy Tyler Bernstine (Obie-winner for “Ruined”), who plays a wet nurse for Mrs. Givings’ infant and Maria Dizzia, a particular stand-out as Mrs. Daldry, the doctor’s unhappy patient.

Ruhl herself, with the help of director Les Waters, establishes right from the start through dialogue and gesture the period’s patronizing attitude towards women that amounts to oppression, the quaint fascination with electricity, the misplaced obsession with propriety, the ignorance about sexual pleasure, the wrong-headedness of the doctor’s approach. There are some helpful metaphors to drive home her point that the women who were “hysterical” (a word derived from the Greek word for “womb”) were reacting to a repressed and repressive society – or, to put it more simply, suffered from a lack of love and appreciation. After Mrs. Daldry’s first electric vibrator treatment, she visits in the parlor with Mrs. Givings, who urges her to overcome her shyness and play their underused piano: “You must play it. The poor thing is languishing without a human touch.” Similar hints come with a long discourse about umbrellas.

All this is so clearly put forth that we get it within the first 15 minutes of the play — a half hour, tops. The problem is that the play is two and a half hours long. In that time, we watch nearly a dozen sessions with a vibrator (or maybe the better verb is hear, since they are conducted under discreet covering.) There are variations to be sure — one time it’s a man, a couple of times it’s two women. There are also tiny subplots, frustrated little efforts among various of the characters to make connection, and a fanciful ending that is at odds with the tone of the rest of the play, intentionally so. But much time is taken with the smug little joke that these naifs did not even understand that what they were experiencing was sexual pleasure, which might have been better-told as a 12-minute skit; allow the two musically-talented leads the chance to sing, and it would have been firmly in Monty Python territory. Instead, “In The Next Room, or the vibrator play” is a tease without titillation; it has the rhythm of pornography without the pleasures of pornography; most theatergoers would probably not find it very shocking, but for all the expressed intention to offer insights into attitudes towards sex and electricity, it is also not all that stimulating.

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In The Next Room, or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl
at the Lyceum Theater (149 West 45th Street)
Directed by Les Waters
Sets by Annie Smart, costumes by David Zinn, lighting by Russell Champa, sound by Bray Poor, music by Jonathan Bell
Cast:
Laura Benanti as Mrs. Givings
Michael Cerveris as Dr. Givings
Wendy Rich Stetson as Annie
Thomas Jay Ryan as Mr Daldry
Maria Dizzia as Mrs. Daldry
Quincy Tyler Bernstine as Elizabether
Chandler Williams as Leo Irving
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Ticket prices from $46.50 to $96.50

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