We’re approaching the end of theater season, and a trio of new plays opens now, all running through the end of the month. Then summer will be here and there will be nothing but dreary blockbuster action flicks for city dwellers to get their fill of narrative entertainment — and don’t tell me that long afternoons at the Hot Club followed by hungover days watching Nova will cut it. Sure, your friends will tell you lots of searingly funny narratives during those afternoons, but you won’t remember the best bits by the time the headache sets in.

You’ll certainly remember In The Next Room (Or The Vibrator Play) though, if you can make it all the way to 2nd Story Theater in Warren to see it one of these May nights (runs through May 29). This production of the 2010 Pulitzer finalist is a ribald and unembarrassed exploration of sexual stimulation — yes, we’re talking that kind of vibrator — male and female gender roles, and what it is to be known and to love.

Written by 2001 Brown MFA grad and general rising star Sarah Ruhl — her Dead Man’s Cell Phone played at Trinity last season — the play is based on the titillating fact that, at the dawn of the age of electricity, Victorian doctors used vibrating devices to help relieve hysterical women of their symptoms. Fantastic, but true; Victorian doctors apparently saw the treatment as a release of pent up female frustration from the womb, since, you know, anything wrong with a woman must be to do with that.

The next room of the title refers to the “operating theater” where Dr. Givings, a nice but stiffly detached young married man, administers the new treatment to female, and even male, patients. (The latter involves a huge silver anal dildo that would thrill any Perishable audience and caused a distinct ripple of titters to run through the audience of mostly gray-haired East Bay burghers at a performance last weekend.)

Review continues after the jump.

Meanwhile his wife (played by Gabby Sherba, seen here) languishes in the drawing room next door, tormented by the feelings of inadequacy, fear and boredom so familiar to new parents — for the couple has an infant baby, and Catherine Givings doesn’t have enough milk for her. As new people enter their lives and Catherine begins to break down the wall between the two worlds the rooms represent, themes of sadness and loss intertwine with awakenings and discoveries, and our heroine finds she might not need that vibrator any more.

The play is directed by Perishable Theater’s Vanessa Gilbert, a rare guest director at this small theater, and she plays it for laughs all the way. The actors are all good, even great — Gabby Sherba, who plays Catherine Givings, could use a few more moments of stillness, perhaps, but then, Gilbert has obviously decided that laughs will help the risqué subject matter go down, and the audience last weekend seemed to agree.

The play was, to my mind, sufficiently nuanced — jealousy and frustration are bedfellows to all the orgasm jokes — to deserve a more nuanced production. This is great material, and the determined emphasis on every pun sold it short. I missed the steady directorial hands of 2nd Story’s Ed Shea and Lynne Collinson. But hey — go see it and decide for yourselves. It’s worth anyone’s time. Plus 2nd Story has a great little curved wooden bar downstairs.

So, that’s the East Bay for ya — all hot electric sex in lovingly rehabbed Victorian buildings, all for less than $27 a head. (Why am I not living there again?)

Also opening this week are Why Torture Is Wrong, And The People Who Love Them at Pawtucket’s Gamm, and The Completely Fictional – Utterly True – Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe, runs through June 5 at Providence’s Trinity Rep (written by Trinity company member Stephen Thorne, he of several standout performances this season alone). They both sound kooky and fun, and I for one intend to hit them both this weekend. Terrorists and the mysterious death of a horror writer — add a pre-show marg or two and my weekend is good to go.

Tags: theater

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