Sydney Reviews

Shocking. Positively shocking.

The current (excuse the pun) production at New Theatre, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl, is ostensibly a playful piece, but also painful and poignant, and perhaps a little bit shocking.

In the Next Room is a Thanks Givings feast, without the turkey and trimmings. Well, you might spot the turkey, and there are trimmings, but in a nutshell, the play is about a medical man, named Givings, enamoured of Edison’s electrical power generation, awed by its myriad uses, from creating light and recording sound to electrocuting elephants as experimental entertainments.

His specific area of focus is applying it to the genitals of women suffering hysteria, causing paroxysm, and bingo, the Big O. It’s conduct most becoming.

So engrossed in electrical application and the care of other women, he neglects the needs and comfort of his wife, Catherine, who has recently delivered him a daughter. Postpartum, her inability to express enough milk takes on an expression of grief and rejection.
A recent patient’s husband offers his domestic, Elizabeth, recently bereaved of a baby to be employed as a wet nurse to the Givings’ offspring.

This deal, along with all the dealings that transpire in the other room, conspire to make Catherine a stranger in her own home. In order to alleviate this alienation, she conspires to engage with her husband’s patients.

One could not wish for a better Catherine Givings than Sarah Greenwood – ebullient with a simmering sadness, a subdued joy, enduring a benign but stultifying patriarchy.

Riley Thomas as Dr. Givings, gives a straight laced but strategically not po faced performance. He is in his element with Givings' clinical approach to the clitoris, not so much gleeful for the gynaecological benefit but of the eclectic uses of the electric.

Lisa Kelly as Sabrina Daldry exudes good vibrations, a fine balance between stately decorum and comic excitation. Sabrina’s husband, the dull and dreary Dick Daldry, a name that conjures onomatopoeia and whose character would shudder at the thought of onanism is adroitly and drolly played by Lewis McLeod.

Alyona Popova plays Givings’ comely nurse, Annie, with a virtuosity of understatement, a perfectly poised presence, subtly effective in a couple of climactic moments. Elizabeth Ruva Shoko provides a powerful poignancy to the stoic Elizabeth, a pious woman whose faith has been irretrievably damaged by the death of her infant son. And Luke Visentin as the flamboyant Leo Irving is quite hilarious as the dandy diagnosed with hysteria, the first male to take the cure.

Tom Bannerman’s set is splendid aesthetically and practically, marvellously evoking the period and allowing the action between living room and surgery to flow seamlessly.

Lighting designer Alicia Badger, dare I say it, shines with its assured mix of candle and electric light and costume designer Hugo Fraser works wardrobe wonders with layers of lingerie, frocks, bonnets and waistcoats.

Director Emma Whitehead’s production creates quite a buzz, a sensation of elation.

Come at least once. You might even want to come again.