In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play

By Sarah Ruhl
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). This comedy about marriage, intimacy, and electricity 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: the vibrator. Adjacent to the doctor's laboratory, his young and energetic wife tries to tend to their newborn daughterand wonders about 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.
"Insightful, fresh and funny, the play is as rich in thought as it is in feeling. 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