In the Next Room or the vibrator play

Tonight I saw the first play of this years season at the Woolly Mammoth Theater In the Next Room or the vibrator play. The subject matter was as racy as the title suggests, but actually dealt with love and repressed feelings in a fairly moving way. The staging all took place in one fixed scene, and it was much more basic than some of the elaborate STC productions. It started out as a seeming comedy of manners (early 20th century repressed social attitudes) but with a doctor who treated “hysteria” by applying a new-fangled electric body massager to create a “paroxysm” in his patients, and their discovery of the benefits of this new “cure”. But in the end it actually began dealing with the subjects of self-deception and lack of communication of people in an interesting way. It ended up with a moving, romantic, scene between the husband and wife discovering a passionate love in their marriage that had thus far been pretty much on the surface. I very much enjoyed the play, particularly the way it ended, and I enjoyed the theater as well.