I might like to have climactically screamed, instead I was left cold In The Next Room with the Vibrator Play
I slide into a Presbyterian pew next to my once legal and loved mate. Cloistered within a small dying paper mill town situated as toe jam in Louisiana’s shaped boot. It’s Christmas Eve, 1991. The normal minimal church crowd in attendance, predominantly blue-haireds with lined faces interspersed with a few of fertile years and their fidgeting offspring. John Goodman, that’s right the actor. He maneuvers his bulk to the front, leaving his college-aged bride in a back pew seated by her mother. Situated behind the lecturn, he opens a stiff limbed folder sheltering a handful of loose leaf pages and begins to read something the minister had pre-selected for him—a Christmas story—not acting, just a reading. In the few seconds it took for this to occur my jaded cultural arts deficit disorder cynically kicked in with harsh judgments disrupt my attention. I thought of the over zealous elevation of entertainers beyond mere demi-gods. I may even have rolled my eyes as my prejudices took hold. Hmmmph. Well, I certainly did not expect this. And, I most definitely did not expect to be swept away by a reading, an “entertainer,” nor a story to which I have grown accustomly numb.
I was wrong with each judgment I cast. This has happened a time or two or ten before. In direct opposition to my jaded cynicism, I was en-raptured—the closest I’ll get to not being “left behind.” I became embedded in the story as I embodied Goodman’s read as real, as his own, as a living and breathing memory tucked away and just now pulled from his head. No falsetto, no gestural or verbal acting of note, just a reading that left no room for an analysis of craft or a candy-cane-coated Christ. It was a presence of moment to be held by story and voice. I’ve no idea what Goodman actually did or even said. But at his close, I snapped to, slack jawed, wiping a stunned stupid look from my face. I quickly, quietly, tried to sweep my crumbled jaded judgments out of sight.
* * *
On the other hand earlier this week, 2015, while attending the Vibrator play, which depicts the 1880s clinical application of medical remedies for female hysteria, hence the title, In The Next Room (The Vibrator Play), I was left stiff—woody of sorts but only good for a mental masturbation and my academic hands grew quickly weary. Unlike with Goodman’s reading, I was not drawn in. I was neither stimulated nor stroked. I stood outside the story as the characters left me cold. Why? I should like this play; I’ve sewn nine-foot vaginas that I suspended row upon row like meat in a cold locker. I’ve read Judith Butler; pondered my engendered cultural captivity and have even read about female nineteenth century hysteria. This play should have played to the likes of me. It did not. Of course, we should return to the fact that I am not naturally attracted to theatrical productions and that my last play was actually not a play at all but a high school musical, Oklahoma, circa 1978. But, I watch movies and know the potential of embodied by stories, living as though a character line after line. I even now know the potential of the oral and well read, as I experienced with John Goodman.
Lacking informed knowledge of technical craft of the staged play, I grope for why I was left cold, in the next room and I arrive at voice. Strained falsettos of sorts, the actors’ were altered into alien other. I believe these arise from the necessary project required to reach the audience. Despite the function, it disrupted me from finding the characters plausible realities. Elizabeth, the wet nurse, is the one exception. Though I lean forward to her, she modulates subtly with mood, with a story seemingly her own. No projected falsetto. Only she gave me access to the real intent of the play yet I am perpetually disturb, disengage by the alienation in the others. Admittedly, the play leads me to snicker and blush for the script is not lacking in innuendos. But, I am not laughing hysterically. A disappointment since I have the scatological humor of an adolescent and could easily have been rolling in the aisles. Sigh. I feel the absence.
The plot intertwines with the sub-stories giving it depth and multiple meanings. It calls into question how historical hysteria may still be defining gender-linked cultural leanings. There is definitely a lot right with this play.
The closing moments have immediacy and intimacy bound up in an unexpected gender decision, as the husband, the lead doctor, is stripped uncomfortably bare by his wife. The bodily gestures were subtle, in fact probably real since the male actor did actual become naked on the stage. But even here, I am jolted out of belief in this closing climax for lack of cohesive character development as foreshadowing. From beginning to middle the acting appeared as “staged,” which separats it from the wonderfully lived end. I think if the awkward and intimate in close could have been captured throughout the play, I definitely would have consider paying work earned money for a ticket. Fortunately, it was free.. Yet I am disappointed to not having been stimulated to match the lead characters line in climactic hysteria, “Oh Annie!” Instead, I silently slide from my seat, mentally cold for my drive home.