The Originality of the Play “In the Next Room” or “The Vibrator Play” by S. Ruhl

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The technical progress is moved by the inventions of new useful and more effective devices and machines. Different inventions in the sphere of chemistry, biology, science, telecommunications and other important branches of human activity performed an essential part in a modern technical progress. Nevertheless, not all of the inventions were initially invented for the aims they are used now. The play In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) by Sarah Ruhl depicts the primary use of the device, which is used for women’s sexual satisfaction now. This paper is dedicated to the analysis of the play through manifesting the themes and statement about the society and family drawbacks of that time; evaluating of the quality of the acting on the basis of relaxation, and sensor awareness; the quality of composition, directing and design and technical characteristics..

The play takes place during Victorians epoch in the late 1880s. A young gynecologist is making his career success due to his invention which may treat women’s “hysteria” by bringing them to orgasm. The orgasm is treated during Victorian times as a new clinical device but not a way to get a personal sexual satisfaction as we know it nowadays. The doctor has a wife, who never got that her husband generously offers to all of his patients. She hesitates to ask him about it, and, besides, she needs the contact with husband but not with a cold buzzing mechanism – a doctor’s device. Thus, other themes of the play include the Victorian strictness of family values which are based on the ignorance of true women’s sexual desire and modesty. Such restrictions lead to jealousy and women’s health weakening. Besides, upstanding physician is also greeted by the pleased husbands of cured women. “Thank you, Dr. Givings,” he says. “You have no idea what a source of anguish my wife’s illness has been to me.” There follows a little hiccup of a pause. “And to her, of course.” (Ruhl, 12). This episode also stresses out one more important theme, which is the centralization and predominance of the man’s will during Victorian and modern periods.

Any good play needs to be performed in the best way as to achieve comprehension from the spectators’ side. Therefore, the actors should do their best to make the spectators believe that they are not in a theater but in the time and place which is performed, they are real participants of the marvelous drama story. During the play In the Next Room it is possible to feel the spirit of England of the end of the nineteenth century, the puritanism and calmness of Victorian epoch together with the instances of its violation which take place in the room where Dr. Givings treats suffering women. Andrew Borba, who perfectly performed the part of a doctor, deserves the best complements for depicting the innovator of one of the most conservative period in the UK history.

The doctor’s wife Catherine, is the most dramatic character of the play. Kathleen Early skillfully performs her part with a real sensor awareness of the woman of Victorian epoch. The actress depicts the shame of young lady at not being able to feed her baby by own breast milk and her despair of inviting African-American nurse to do it instead. The idea of loneliness and despair is also reinforced by realizing lost of her husband, who preferred his new science to his family and wife. Feeling jealousy, she listens to that what is happening in her husband’s room or “operating theater, which, truth be told, sounds more like a groaning den of iniquity” (Ruhl, 35) as she calls it. The performance of the female patients is also made in the most sensitive way as the sounds of female orgasm which are heart from Doctor’s room is an essential part of the effect produced on spectators.

The composition of the play is based on the classical contraposition between male success and female despair. The paradox of the play is that Catherine, doctor’s wife and formally the closest to him woman, cannot achieve the satisfaction that her husband proposes to every other women. Her destiny is the sounds of others’ ecstasies from the closed door of the doctor’s room. The author skillfully depicts the situation in the modern families on the background of the puritanical epoch of Queen Victory. Thus, the play shows the drawbacks of modern family, where romantic relations are often substituted by climbing the career ladder.

The technical devices of the play are also used adequately. The main of them is a cumbersome device of a doctor which took almost all room of the doctor’s house. Besides, the buzz sound which always accompanied the working process also played the part of the great sound effect of the play. The cumbersomeness and nuisance of the apparatus also discovers the idea of uselessness of any mechanisms in true human relations between men and women.

The play is an outstanding example of the theater art as it presents classical theme of man-woman relations in a new and original way, which comprises the use of modern moral on the background of Victorian epoch. The actor’s sensitive play, thoughtful plot and the sound and visual effects complement the originality of the play.

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