Review: In The Next Room, or the vibrator play

In this house in the 1880s, the drawing room can be the domain of Catherine Givings (Amber McMahon), the slightly frustrated wife, slightly depressed new mother. In the next room is the domain of Dr Givings (Renato Musilino). This is the room where the man of the house can do his work, treating his patients. Largely women. Largely though the power of that newfangled beast: electricity. And the newfangled thing that electricity powers: the vibrator. A strictly utilitarian machine for therapeutic treatment, the cure for hysteria.

Mr Daldry (Brendan Rock) is concerned about his wife, Sabrina (Lizzy Falkland). She is faint, shaky, tired, shies away from bright lights. Hysteria, Dr Givings diagnoses. Not to worry, he and midwife Annie (Katherine Fyffe) will treat her. Once daily. It will all work out fine. Not only is Sabrina treated, but she strikes up a friendship with Catherine, and offers her maid Elizabeth (Pamela Jikiemi), recently bereft of a infant son, up as Catherine’s wet nurse.

But now there is a new patient at Dr Givings office. Leo Irving (Cameron Goodall). But surely Dr Givings couldn’t treat a man? Or could he?

Sarah Ruhl’s In The Next Room, or the vibrator play, gives it all up to its audience front and centre. In this production under director Catherine Fitzgerald, the plot points detailed above are no more than window dressing: this is a comedy about vibrators.

Review: The Price

The Price
by Arthur Miller
Directed by Adam Cook
Presented by the State Theatre Company of South Australia

Pip Miller and Michael Habib showing they can act with a concerned face.

oving away from the involved, complex pieces Adam Cook directed at the State Theatre Company in 2009 (both brilliantly directed – Mnemonic a work of art, and King Lear explosively amazing), Cook’s fist show for 2010 is a much quieter and subtler affair, with just four characters, a single room and a plot which happens in real-time.

Arthur Miller’s The Price is unmistakably set in New York City of the ‘60s.  I sometimes come out of plays thinking, “why did they even bother putting on those accents?”, but there is no way this dialogue would work without the heavy New Yarwk accent.  While not perfect, nor perfectly consistent, for the most part they were carried by the cast just fine, who were all solid in their roles and character’s development.