REVIEW: FAC's 'In the Next Room' has buzz, but it's low on batteries

You’ve got to admire a risk taker, and in his first season as the Fine Arts Center’s performing arts director, Scott RC Levy has taken a few.

“Assassins,” perhaps Stephen Sondheim’s most problematic musical, was a winner, despite the rough language driving some out before intermission. Sarah Ruhl’s “In the Next Room or the vibrator play,”  which runs through Feb. 19, tests audiences again with ... well, a Victorian vibrator.

But for all the anticipation attached to “In the Next Room,” the production, which was directed by Joye Cook-Levy, is curiously lackluster, a 10-foot dark chocolate cake that turns out to have a styrofoam center.

Catherine Givings (Stephanie Philo) is bubbly, funny and profoundly bored — a woman, like many in the Victorian era, in search of something she can’t exactly define. Dr. Givings (Chad Siebert) loves his wife, but his attention is focused on his “therapeutic electric massage” and curing female hysteria, one paroxsym at a time. He never notices that his patients are much like his wife: Anxious, neglected women who have no more power or purpose than the caged bird in the Giving’s living room.

Catherine’s rather decorative unraveling, which is partly due to her inability to feed her new baby adequately, spurs her to yearn for (then, demand) the one thing her husband denies her, the object of his primary obsession: His mysterious treatment.

What transpires is funny (did I mention it’s a comedy?), a rose-colored reflection of a naive time long before Sally so convincingly put Harry in his place on the issue of female sexuality.
Ultimately, though, the Ruhl play is about finding emotional intimacy, which the strange final scene drives home. On the way, she sideswipes issues of patriarchal power, female sexuality, lesbianism, racial mixing and backward turn-of-the-century thinking.

Ruhl’s ambitions make for a challenging work requiring good comic timing and the emotional underpinnings to make Act II believable.

On the opening Sunday matinee, the production stumbled on both counts.

Siebert easily turned in the most rounded performance of the evening. His doctor is a boy with toy, but without a clue when it comes to his wife. His dismay becomes complete befuddlement as the play progresses. Siebert carries it off well.

Granted, Philo nails Catherine’s flighty frenzy for attention and meaning. Her inner life, however, was harder to buy. And without it, Act II and ultimately, the play, runs aground.
Giving’s trusted nurse Annie was mostly relegated to comforting pats and kind words. Amy Brooks, though, makes the most of the role, delivering a memorable 3-D moment when she gets a chance. Kudos.

Christopher Sheley’s set was intricate and quite appropriately wall-papered within an inch of its life. But in his effort to include a hallway, a foyer, windows and multiple rooms, Sheley created an awkward, multi-level space that left actors traversing stairs — up and down and up again — to get from one parallel room to the other. Awkward and distracting, I kept wondering if Victorian shoes were up to all the climbing.