Advertisement

Culture Stage

Feeling good vibrations

IN THE NEXT ROOM OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Richard Rose (Tarragon, 30 Bridgman). Runs to ­October 23, Tuesday-Saturday 8 pm, matinees Saturday-Sunday 2:30 pm (except October 15 & 22). $20-$47. 416-531-1827. See listing.


It’s shocking how much actor Trish Lindström gets to explore in Sarah Ruhl’s In The Next Room Or The Vibrator Play, the Tarragon season opener.

Set in the 1880s at the start of the electrical age, it deals with Givings, a doctor who uses the newly invented Chattanooga Vibrator to deal with hysteria in his female patients. His own unhappy wife, Catherine (Lindström), wonders if the device might help their marriage.

“The role of women at that time was not unlike that of children: to be seen and not heard,” says the performer, who spent most of the past year at Soulpepper and recently played a big-hearted royal servant in Exit The King. “Unfortunately, Catherine, a new mother, can’t breastfeed her own child, and sees herself as impotent and redundant. All she can do is pour tea.”

Things change when her husband gets a new patient, Sabrina Daldry, and Catherine gets wind of the new electrical device he uses to induce sexual paroxysms in the “sick” Sabrina.

“What Catherine hears through the door of her husband’s treatment room are strange cries that suggest either pleasure or pain. Her imagination goes to work when Sabrina has an orgasm and Catherine doesn’t know what it is it becomes the unseen monster behind the door.

“The sound, primal and instinctual, is so strange in this world of buttoned-up, restrained women and uptight, patronizing men,” says Lindström.

The play is a dark comedy, a look not only at Victorian sexuality but also at universal urges.

“It had the feeling of porn when I first read the play,” admits Lindström, a talented photographer as well as actor. “But though it deals with raw sex, the topic is stripped down so it becomes technical and demystified.

“Still, that doesn’t satisfy Catherine’s insatiable curiosity. It’s struck me how much this play is about hunger: her baby’s for food, Catherine’s for attention and love from her husband.”

Download associated audio clip.

Director Richard Rose has pointed out to the cast that the play’s most interesting material is that which the characters do their best to hide.

“The other side of that, of course, is what we choose to show. This is a world of propriety, especially for the women, and everything changes when they decide not to be bound by corsets and social mores.”

Download associated audio clip.

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted