Merciful God, did anyone else loathe The Vibrator Play as much as I did?

[petrovich]

Posted: 11/23/09 at 11:23pm

I need to write because I feel I've been living in an alternate reality reading reviews of this play, which I thought was one of the most jejune, sophomoric, and lazy efforts I've seen on Broadway in quite a while. While the premise is intriguing, it seemed to me (and from the few friends who have also sat through it, to at least some others) that Ms. Ruhl got enchanted with an idea, wrote a couple of scenes, and forgot to write a play. There is no conflict or drama to speak of -- merely a situation. There is no meaningful character development except for a deus ex machina ending that relies almost solely on an 'It's A Small World' animatronic moment of stagecraft. In fact, the craft of the play itself is nearly non-existent: cliches and groan-inducing conventions in the scenes are rampant, and so lazy (how many characters "forget" costume items as an excuse to return to the stage? If the writer is parodying a farce with that repetition, it fails) that I wondered how Ruhl got this play past its first workshop. Meanwhile, Ruhl is so ungenerous toward her characters that they all seem almost miraculously stupid. And yet, critics almost unanimously (except for a few voices in the wilderness) have knelt and done their obsequies before her. All hail the Macarthur Genius.

The production, meanwhile, is carried along by Laura Benanti, whose wide-eyed performance seemed to me better fit for a pantomime than for a woman whose internal world we are supposed to take seriously. Wildly gesticulating, dropping her jaw, skipping around the stage, one expects her to say "Shut! Up!" like Elle Woods hearing some gossip from the sorority girls. Michael Cerveris is an almost invisible presence, though one can hardly blame him: a doctor who is unaware that the reaction caused by inserting an electric instrument into a woman's vagina might be in some way sexual is almost preternaturally clueless, and is implausible -- despite Lincoln Center's best dramaturgical defenses -- in anything but a farce. Yet this is not (at least, as Ruhl's own statements indicate) intended to be a farce. This is intended to be a seriocomic meditation on sexuality and relationships. And in all this staggering stupidity, the one character who seems to understand the relationship between objects put into vaginas and orgasm is the one black character, the wet nurse Elizabeth. This is the oldest cliche in a very racist book: black people are more sexual than white people, as they are somehow closer to nature and more in touch with their feelings. And Elizabeth perhaps understands orgasm because black men have larger sex organs. If the depiction weren't so offensive, it would be laughable.

In fact, the entire play seems to me laughable, and not in the ways it might be intended: trafficking in easy jokes that allow a modern audience to chuckle at our superiority to our Victorian ancestors ("Look how mystified they are by electric lights! Look how sexually repressed they are!") without ever trying to understand them as human beings, only as types. Human beings are complicated. They are full of contradictions. Human beings -- at least those human beings who we are to take seriously in the theatre -- are not the Innocent Wife, the Aloof Husband, the Tortured Artist, or the Earthy African American. And the theater -- even the most absurdist of comedies -- represents our best chance, or so I believe, of excavating human beings and figuring out how they express an inner world, in language and in behavior, to others and to themselves. By my standards at least, Sarah Ruhl is not writing plays that move American theatre ahead. She is setting us back, and she is being lavishly praised for doing so. -- David

[changinandhow]

Posted: 11/23/09 at 11:31pm

"And in all this staggering stupidity, the one character who seems to understand the relationship between objects put into vaginas and orgasms..."

No offense intended - but you're a gay man, aren't you?

I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the play.
Updated On: 11/23/09 at 11:31 PM

[MusicSnob1]

Posted: 11/23/09 at 11:33pm

I agree, 100%

[petrovich]

Posted: 11/23/09 at 11:44pm

actually, i'm not. sorry. play again. and i don't think this play's problem is that gay men don't get it. see: Isherwood et elia.

what i am is someone who thinks theatre is actually kind of important, and it saddens me to see the bar lowered in this way.

[changinandhow]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 12:39am

No no, my point was not at all that gay men "don't get it." But one of the things Sarah Ruhl addresses in the play is the ignorance about female sexuality at the time, and I felt you further opened discussion on that with the comment in your review. This isn't something I really want to get into in a thread on BWW, but the vibrator used by the doctor in the play had little or nothing to do with the patients' vaginas; THAT is indeed why the practice of treating hysteria with these "machines" was seen as innocent and completely disconnected with anything sexual. You note the lack of understanding these characters have about the relationship (or lackthereof) between "objects put into vaginas and orgasms" - I believe that is exactly one of the points Ruhl was trying to put across. Updated On: 11/24/09 at 12:39 AM

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 1:38am

changin makes a very strong point. petro, I can understand why someone would not like the play. It definitely is not everyone's cup of tea. However, the LCT booklet they have at the theater provides a great deal of insight into where Ruhl's idea has come from. Reading that prepared me, I think, for quite an exquisite piece of theater. I loved it. There may not really be a great deal of conflict or happening, but what is being said is quite moving. But to each his own!

[Craww]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 2:13am

I automatically discount the opinion of anyone who says "jejune" without a trace of irony.

[dshnookie]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 3:04am

I found the piece quite charming. Benanti's performance was eccentric, slightly unpredictable and made for an interesting watch. I will say it got rather convoluted at the end with all of the characters getting entangled and subsequently rushing out of the play. The trees and bushes looked unnatural at the end but don't necessarily ruin a beautiful scene. I'm sorry you didn't care for it more, seeing shows I don't like at the very least makes me appreciate the ones I do like that much more. :)

[ghostlight2]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 3:31am

"And Elizabeth perhaps understands orgasm because black men have larger sex organs."

Where did that come from, because it's sure as hell not in the play.

To answer your question, no, I don't think anyone loathed it as much as you for no one else has gone on and on (and dear God on) as you have. I found it a sweet, funny little play that took itself a little too seriously and ran a little long in the second act. Reminds me of something I've read recently, as a matter of fact, minus the sweet and funny part.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 5:51am

I haven't seen the play, so I can only post this:

You are definitely missing the historically accurate point here: at this time, most people failed to believe that women had ANY pleasure with sex. It was just their 'duty'. Doctors did indeed "treat" a myriad of women's issue with a vibrator...thinking that they were medically healing.

[ken8631]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 8:09am

Wife wants to see it, after reading this we'll go anyway - lol.....

[adamgreer]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 8:10am

I enjoyed act 1, but found act 2 to be insufferable.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 4:19pm

Petrovich is being far too generous to this idiotic production. The play is bullsh*t. As performed, it comes off like NORA AND TORVALD VISIT THE PLEASURE CHEST. Opinions will differ, of course, but I hated pretty much all of it. The ideas might have been interesting if they had been presented in a better play with some more consistent performances from the leads.

Pathetic. I want my time and money back.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 5:30pm

I too was mystified with the gushing reviews I read. I found the play "OK" . The second act intolerably long. There were a few good scenes that set up her premise but ultimately everything went no where. Ruhl seems to lose focus, then regain it for a spell only to lose it again. I was sort of angry I spent full price on the tickets.

[April Saul]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 5:43pm

Sorry, I'm with ghostlight, nookie and theatertrash on this one, and also find the petro's comment re: insertion to be especially clueless! My only criticism of the play is that the second act was a bit too long; I found the ending especially powerful and was interested in this strange, sad but true, historical footnote on male misunderstanding of female sexuality. I'd be curious to know if any women here really hated it, or any men particularly loved it, as I am imagining that gender may be pretty decisive in how one reacts to this play...true?

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 5:47pm

I haven't seen it yet, but don't feel too bad about not liking a show that critics love. I HATED Fela! and look what's happened there. Different strokes, different folks.

Updated On: 11/24/09 at 05:47 PM

[bjh2114]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 5:48pm

I'm male and absolutely loved it from start to finish. I actually liked Act 2 more than Act 1. Could they have cut 10 minutes? Probably. I still really enjoyed it though. Easily my favorite new play of the season thus far (though with Next Fall coming, my guess is that it will soon change). I thought that Ruhl's writing was beautiful and that the acting from the cast (especially Wendy Rich Stetson and Quincy Tyler Bernstein) was superb.

[April Saul]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 5:50pm

I like you, bjh!

[Patash]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 6:14pm

Maybe the problem is the original poster forgot to put the batteries in his/her vibrator before seeing the play?

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 6:57pm

I'm male. And loved Act 2 most.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 11/24/09 at 7:04pm

The Village Voice review will show up tomorrow. I'm sure it will be a pretty hardcore pan.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 11/25/09 at 12:16pm

Feingold's review below, in its entirety. A pan, but not as hardcore as others he's done:

Nothing so overpowering happens in Sarah Ruhl's In the Next Room (Lyceum Theatre), an intelligent, erratic work that means to explore the complexities of female sexuality, and of marriage, but gets trapped in its uncertainties of approach. In 1880s New York, a progressive young doctor (Michael Cerveris) uses a newly invented electrical appliance to relieve sexually frustrated wives, till his own untutored wife (Laura Benanti) horns in on the act. Ruhl's premise could produce anything from stark tragedy to giddy sex farce: What she supplies is a kind of jittery tasting menu that offers little dabs of each possibility. Some passages of her writing offer beauty and even heartfelt wisdom; others are merely inane. The repeated sight gag of the Victorian vibrator grows tiresome, because Ruhl hasn't built the surrounding narrative convincingly enough to give it meaning.

Les Waters's production echoes Ruhl's indecisiveness of tone, never settling clearly in one period or one style. Cerveris, always to be relied on, hews to the 1880s, making the blindered, driven scientist a touchingly real figure. Quincy Tyler Bernstine, as a servant, and Wendy Rich Stetson, as Cerveris's impassive assistant, play with doughty realism; Chandler Williams cannily imbues an artist-patient with a high-flown manner that never veers into excess. Against these performances, Maria Dizzia plays the principal patient in a shrill, contemporary tone straight from SNL, Thomas Jay Ryan makes her husband a brash vaudeville-sketch lout, and poor Benanti, apparently adrift between the two approaches, veers this way and that like a shipwreck victim wondering which way to turn for rescue.

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 11/25/09 at 1:58pm

I couldn't disagree with that review more.

What I found so wonderful about Benanti's performance was how curious her character was. I never for a moment doubted that I was watching a woman hungry for knowledge and understanding.

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 11/25/09 at 2:15pm

I seriously enjoyed this play. Is it flawed? Without a doubt, but I think it is a playful, provocative, and at times sad work. I think Benanti was a wonder in the role. There must have been extroverted, naturally curious women in the Victorian era-just few are written about. Also, at some point women had to start asking questions-maybe Ruhl is speaking to that. I think that there are some incredible performances in the Vibrator play, but mainly all the females. They each are so nuanced, heartbreaking and comical. Plus, I think it is fascinating to look at a time where orgasms did not have a name.

All in all, I think it is a thought-provoking and moving play. I don't really get the histrionic "Merciful God, did anyone else loathe The Vibrator Play as much as I did". Obviously, its not your cup of tea. Get over it and see something else. Lots of people like it.

[goldenboy]

Posted: 1/1/10 at 2:40pm

I thought it was the best play I've seen in a long time! Reminded me a bit of Cloud 9 and the sexual repression of the Victorian Age. I loved the theme--which is about human sexuality and how unpredictable it is. And how we can't box it into what society expects of us.

I loved the question of what kind of person are you? ONe who doesn't use an umbrella and embraces the elements or one who does? I thought that spoke eons.

A play about sexual repression in the 1880's. A enjoyable play about depression and hysteria. After a week of theatre, it was the highlight of the week!

The performances were wonderful and the writing quite witty. Michael Cervaris and Laura Benatti were charming and that actor who is a victim o male hysteria-what a
hilarious self involved hunk.

And yes, I am a gay man and I loved every minute of this play. It was the sleeper of the week which inlcuded the enjoyable Finians Rainbow, and Memphis and
the tedious Loaded, The Understudy and the predicable mundance In the heights.