FTE Brings “Hysterical” Period Piece to Life on Downtown Stage

“That is why they have poets—to classify all the degrees of love. It is for scientists to classify the maladies arising from the want of it,” observes Dr. Givings, a late 19th-Century physician, who finds himself at the awkward intersection of love, sex and … technology in Sarah Ruhl’s darkly comedic and insightful drama, In the Next Room (Or the Vibrator Play). The Fredericksburg Theatre Ensemble will bring the story of this unlikely weapon in the battle of the sexes to the stage in downtown Fredericksburg beginning August 11.

Dr. Givings practices medicine in a small upstate New York spa town at the fortunate coincidence of the sexual Dark Ages and the age of electrification. The good doctor uses a collection of buzzing and whirring devices that look more like failed experiments from Thomas Edison’s laboratory than advanced medical equipment. Dr. Givings treats patients of both genders, but Ruhl focuses her play on “hysteria,” the catch-all phrase for any problem experienced by any woman at any time.

Ruhl explores several themes in her show. The play takes a serious, yet hilarious, look at complex issues of sex, marriage, race, and class, set against Mrs. Giving’s (Kylie Clark) feelings of isolation and abandonment as her husband’s life focuses on the activities “in the next room.”

FTE veteran Doy Demsick portrays the brilliant but clueless Dr. Givings. He describes Givings as “an adorably naive man of science who provides orgasms to his patients while neglecting his own wife.” He added that in the world of the show, “women have no say in their lives, men have no understanding of women, and we turn to electricity to spark life in our relationships.” According to Demsick, audiences will find the production’s combination of “hysterically dated science, charming humor, love, sex and electricity” to be irresistible.

Directed by Courtney Fox, FTE will present In the Next Room at the Allstate Community Theater, 810 Caroline Street in downtown Fredericksburg, on August 11-13 and August 18-20. Tickets are $20 and are available at https://www.fredericksburgtheatre.org/.