Victorian melodrama cloaks a modern vibe
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday February 4, 2011
The isolation of playwright Sarah Ruhl‚„s characters can hit a nerve with audiences, writes Bryce Hallett. In The Next Room, or the vibrator play opens at the Opera House Drama Theatre on February 11. Previews begin on Monday.A rriving at a French cafe near the heart of East Village, New York, Sarah Ruhl is heavily rugged up to combat the elements. For good reason. The scene outside could be straight from one of her vividly mundane and mythic plays: near-desolate streets blanketed in snow, pedestrians slipping and sliding, and vehicles entombed in ice.It is two days after a blizzard and Manhattan‚„s bustle and blaring taxi horns have been quelled, which suits Ruhl fine. ‚œ‚œIt‚„s bitterly cold, but not having the traffic and noise is not such a bad thing when you‚„ve got 10-month-old twins,‚„‚„ says Ruhl, whose play In the Next Room, or the vibrator play opens in Sydney next week. ‚œ‚œIt‚„s an exciting time to be writing for the stage, even though government support is next to zero. Most of the patronage goes to the theatres, not to the artists, and the great minds of the theatre have gone to advertising or network TV, which is much the same thing. It‚„s very sad.‚„‚„Ruhl, who studied under a fellow playwright, Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive), at university and was awarded a MacArthur grant four years ago, has become an acclaimed, sought-after playwright in North America.When her Passion Play cycle premiered in Washington in 2005 it revealed Ruhl‚„s deft ability to juxtapose the real and extraordinary. But it was her romantic comedy The Clean House that established her credentials. Frequently staged throughout the US, the play centres on a physician who cannot convince her depressed Brazilian maid to clean the house. The popularity of The Clean House, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005, encouraged Ruhl to further her writing and to take more risks, given her warm and funny insights seemed to connect with audiences at a time when so much of Broadway has become ‚œ‚œa sausage-making machine‚„‚„ inflated by hype.‚œ‚œMany people these days are premiering things regionally and building a momentum before taking it to New York, which is seen as definitive,‚„‚„ Ruhl says. ‚œ‚œThe traditional model is that if a show succeeds in New York it‚„ll be done regionally but if it tanks then that‚„s the last you‚„ll hear of it.‚„‚„When her intriguingly named In The Next Room, or the vibrator play premiered on Broadway last year it was well cared for. ‚œ‚œThe play was produced by the Lincoln Centre and so my Broadway experience wasn‚„t harrowing. The pressure for me was that I was expecting twins at the time. Everything was happening at once.‚„‚„Nominated for a Tony Award last year, Ruhl was inspired by the book The Technology of Orgasm and an observation by a physician that at least three-quarters of women in the 19th century had ailments that could be cured by the vibrator. The playwright immediately began researching the subject.‚œ‚œIt was a great little book about the history of the vibrator. It was surprising to discover that in the Victorian era it was acceptable to use vibrators to treat ‚œhysteria‚„ in women and [that] it had nothing to do with sexual pleasure ...‚„‚„Months after letting the research settle, Ruhl began constructing a lively, humorous and humane play that was conventional on the surface yet opened a secret clinical ritual to illuminate the conflict, disillusionment and yearning of a doctor and his wife.‚œ‚œI let the research go because you want to hear the voices of the people and not the history or politics behind them. It‚„s a matter of allowing their marriage and the themes of intimacy and isolation to take over.‚„‚„The play struck a chord with New York audiences, including the conservatives who Ruhl had presumed would dislike some of the play‚„s devices. ‚œ‚œSeeing one of my plays in front of an audience is harrowing and wonderful and surprising. I wanted the play to be disarming and have it set in a naturalistic way; the idea of seeing this drawing room that‚„s straight out of an 1880s melodrama and having people say, ‚œ‚œOh, this isn‚„t what we were expecting?‚„ ... For some people the shock comes from the emotional rawness and intimacy of the characters, and it can touch a nerve with couples who are having a problem with intimacy in their lives.‚„‚„In The Next Room, or the vibrator play made the Pulitzer Prize shortlist last year and the Sydney Theatre Company production, directed by Pamela Rabe and starring Jacqueline McKenzie and David Roberts, is only the play‚„s second major production in the world.‚œ‚œI grew up in the midwest, have very English taste and feel at home in Australia,‚„‚„ Ruhl says. ‚œ‚œI have all these connections there. My mum is dating an Australian, my mother-in-law is an Australian and my husband is half-Thai, half-Australian.‚„‚„Ruhl grew up surrounded by loving eccentrics, half-Irish families and dark-witted storytellers. ‚œ‚œI was interested in philosophical books and 19th-century novels from a young age and grew up around the theatre. My mum was an actor and she‚„d direct community productions, a wide range of shows. When I was nine I used to take notes and give them to my mum: now there‚„s a cautionary tale.‚„‚„
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald
