By ISABELLA OLIVARES
Following the tension-filled Agnes of God in Repertory Philippines’ 2017 season is a cheeky modern comedy.
What happens behind closed doors? In Repertory Philippines’ new theatrical comedy, pretty much everything.
(In The Next Room (or The Vibrator Play))
The show, aptly named In The Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) by American playwright Sarah Ruhl, takes place mainly in two adjacent rooms in the house of Dr. Givings (Joshua Spafford) and his wife Catherine (Giannina Ocampo Van Hoven): the living room and the “operating theater.” The rooms are separated by a single wooden door, which Dr. Givings usually keeps locked.
The operating theater is where the doctor and his assistant Annie (Tami Monsod) treat patients suffering from hysteria by inducing “paroxysms” (the doctor’s clinical euphemism for “orgasm”) with “the machine,” or what we have come to know today as the vibrator. It is in this room and with this machine that two unknowingly sexually (and emotionally) frustrated 19th-century women – namely Catherine and Sabrina Daldry (Caisa Borromeo) – discover the power of the then-elusive female orgasm.
Repertory Philippines’ take on Sara Ruhl’s witty yet biting criticism of society’s constrictive treatment of women and female sexuality is a well-put-together symphony of acting and production design orchestrated by director Chris Millado. The set, by Mio Infante, is beautifully adorned with two faces of the Victorian era – lavishly filled and colored in the living room, and somberly plain in the operating theater. The costume design by Bonsai Cielo is likewise a thing of beauty, with each character’s social standing and personality emanating from the fabrics. These elements work harmoniously with Sara Ruhl’s text and bring out the clever symbolism embedded in motifs such as light and dark, wet and dry and clothed and unclothed.
The cast is also very effective. Caisa Borromeo shows off her comedic chops and excellent comic timing as Sabrina, while Giannina Ocampo Van Hoven’s Catherine is skillfully multi-layered, with her airy charm and tactlessness letting the character’s inner turmoil spill through the cracks. Joshua Spafford is entertaining as the intelligent and clinical yet at times emotionally obtuse Dr. Givings. Meanwhile, the cast’s emotional aura is given some grounding Tami Monsod’s Annie, whose no-nonsense nature remains wonderfully sympathetic throughout the play.
The chemistry between these four actors sees the show through the comedy of the first act and the (at-times clunkily written) transition of the second act into the play’s more serious tones. This is especially true for Spafford and Ocampo Van Hoven in the show’s final sequence, where Catherine and her husband have to face the elephants in the room that is their marriage.
The show ends on a quiet and intimate note, which , for the first and only time in the play, occurs outside the house. Here, Catherine is the one administering treatment to her husband, who comes to realize that not all ailments can be healed with the same clinical detachment he has in his operating theater.
Catch Repertory Philippines’ In The Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) from that runs until April 23 at the Onstage Theater In Greenbelt 1, Makati City.
(Caisa Borromeo as Sabrina and Giannina Ocampo Van Hoven as Catherine inspect the vibrator)
(Joshua Spafford as Dr. Givings and Tami Monsod as Annie treat Jeff Flores as Leo Irving with the vibrator)
(Cara Barredo as Elizabeth is hired by Dr. Givings and Catherine)
(Dr. Givings and Catherine inside the operating theater)
(Elizabeth, Catherine and Sabrina converse in the living room)
