Christopher Street NYC DEC 19 2009
Originally uploaded by Charlie Roberts
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
AT THE LYCEUM
Tuesday night I bike through noise and traffic to see the play "In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play" by Sarah Ruhl.
I love a new ambitious play on Broadway. "In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play" is the kind of play you expect to see in a black box. The Lyceum, where it's currently running, has a history of housing risky, less mainstream (less profitable) plays. The theater is old-world and elegant, but because it's closer to Sixth avenue and a small world away from "Phantom" - the rent's probably cheaper allowing less commercial plays a chance at a run (is my guess).
"The Vibrator Play" was produced by Lincoln Center and technically, it's as good as it gets. The sets, props, costumes, acting, lighting and sound, are without fault. We are presented an historically correct parlor and operating room (in the next room) in a house in New York City at the turn of the last century. The sets and costumes alone made my mouth drop open - my eyes widen like a five year old watching an animated (turn of the century) puppet show. The design team ensures that every detail is supported and made effortless for the audience. Like a short stay at an elegant old-world hotel, you're very body delights at the careful attention.
(If only the boorish audience (with their loud talking and musical cell phones) and the barking ushers corraling people to exit the theatre (seconds after the curtain fell) were also committed to art. The house managers were so loud and blunt, I felt like I HAD watched something unseemly (something pornographic) about vibrators.
The play made me (and a lot of the audience) giddy with laughter (embarrassment). What's funnier than watching a person have an orgasm for the first time and not being able to comprehend what it is? But her play isn't naughty, it's spiritual. I wondered (as I left the theatre) how many people in the audience were going to home to help their partner have a great orgasm - (in the sprit of wholesomeness and love).
The play explores how the physical orgasm helps you find yourself, your identity- sex as a way of becoming whole (again). Masturbation is both self love in the physical and spiritual sense. Sharing an orgasm with your lover helps you discover love and who you are.
In Ruhl's play, the american middle class is in the dark (about sex). Men get their sex without emotional connection. Women simply put up with it to have children. In one scene, an African American wet nurse explains to the white women that the physical sensations they describe - sound to her like "when I am intimate with my husband". This is a revelation to the women.
The men in the play (for various reasons) are clueless too.
At the end of the play, the doctor and his wife step outside into a winter garden. It's snowing.
(This was a gorgeous effect but I knew it was coming because little snowflakes fell from the fly-space all night). The woman wants to experience sex outside (in a garden!)
She undresses her husband. She's says she's never fully seen his body before. The woman is in control. The man (the actor) is naked, vulnerable while she remains fully dressed. She asks him to lie down in the snow and makes snow angels. He follows direction and she lies down on top of him.
The ending left me breathless.
Ruhl fills her plays with imagery and intellectual ideas. It's jam packed. The invention of electricity, elephants, art, umbrellas, snow angels, genesis. But returning to eden is (kind of) a conceptual idea. Having the woman want sex in the garden seemed a little convenient. If I'd read the script I would have thought this ending seems performance arty and cinematic. (Also) I guess I think a great play shouldn't change the set for the final five minutes.
But I really loved the play. The world Ruhl conjures is historically fascinating. Her characters are complex but seem historically accurate. Her play forces us to look at progressive ideas about love, and (satisfying) sex through the lens of a terribly oppressed era and culture. That's really cool.
The construction (however) sometimes withers. Ruhl paints herself into a corner having to have her characters retrieve lost hats and gloves to get them back on stage. And I wasn't ready to take on the male artist who appears in the second act. Entertaining yes, but theme wise, my mind was too busy with the new invention of electricity, onanism, umbrellas, elephants, genesis and snow angels.
I biked home after the play. This is why living in Manhattan is so great.
I love a new ambitious play on Broadway. "In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play" is the kind of play you expect to see in a black box. The Lyceum, where it's currently running, has a history of housing risky, less mainstream (less profitable) plays. The theater is old-world and elegant, but because it's closer to Sixth avenue and a small world away from "Phantom" - the rent's probably cheaper allowing less commercial plays a chance at a run (is my guess).
"The Vibrator Play" was produced by Lincoln Center and technically, it's as good as it gets. The sets, props, costumes, acting, lighting and sound, are without fault. We are presented an historically correct parlor and operating room (in the next room) in a house in New York City at the turn of the last century. The sets and costumes alone made my mouth drop open - my eyes widen like a five year old watching an animated (turn of the century) puppet show. The design team ensures that every detail is supported and made effortless for the audience. Like a short stay at an elegant old-world hotel, you're very body delights at the careful attention.
(If only the boorish audience (with their loud talking and musical cell phones) and the barking ushers corraling people to exit the theatre (seconds after the curtain fell) were also committed to art. The house managers were so loud and blunt, I felt like I HAD watched something unseemly (something pornographic) about vibrators.
The play made me (and a lot of the audience) giddy with laughter (embarrassment). What's funnier than watching a person have an orgasm for the first time and not being able to comprehend what it is? But her play isn't naughty, it's spiritual. I wondered (as I left the theatre) how many people in the audience were going to home to help their partner have a great orgasm - (in the sprit of wholesomeness and love).
The play explores how the physical orgasm helps you find yourself, your identity- sex as a way of becoming whole (again). Masturbation is both self love in the physical and spiritual sense. Sharing an orgasm with your lover helps you discover love and who you are.
In Ruhl's play, the american middle class is in the dark (about sex). Men get their sex without emotional connection. Women simply put up with it to have children. In one scene, an African American wet nurse explains to the white women that the physical sensations they describe - sound to her like "when I am intimate with my husband". This is a revelation to the women.
The men in the play (for various reasons) are clueless too.
At the end of the play, the doctor and his wife step outside into a winter garden. It's snowing.
(This was a gorgeous effect but I knew it was coming because little snowflakes fell from the fly-space all night). The woman wants to experience sex outside (in a garden!)
She undresses her husband. She's says she's never fully seen his body before. The woman is in control. The man (the actor) is naked, vulnerable while she remains fully dressed. She asks him to lie down in the snow and makes snow angels. He follows direction and she lies down on top of him.
The ending left me breathless.
Ruhl fills her plays with imagery and intellectual ideas. It's jam packed. The invention of electricity, elephants, art, umbrellas, snow angels, genesis. But returning to eden is (kind of) a conceptual idea. Having the woman want sex in the garden seemed a little convenient. If I'd read the script I would have thought this ending seems performance arty and cinematic. (Also) I guess I think a great play shouldn't change the set for the final five minutes.
But I really loved the play. The world Ruhl conjures is historically fascinating. Her characters are complex but seem historically accurate. Her play forces us to look at progressive ideas about love, and (satisfying) sex through the lens of a terribly oppressed era and culture. That's really cool.
The construction (however) sometimes withers. Ruhl paints herself into a corner having to have her characters retrieve lost hats and gloves to get them back on stage. And I wasn't ready to take on the male artist who appears in the second act. Entertaining yes, but theme wise, my mind was too busy with the new invention of electricity, onanism, umbrellas, elephants, genesis and snow angels.
I biked home after the play. This is why living in Manhattan is so great.
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