Pleasure and satisfaction are comic gold in this electric account of the earliest vibrator.

The Circuit Playhouse's production of In The Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) introduces an odd sexual scenario for the proper residents of an upper-class Victorian Era community; many of whom are still reeling from the creation of electricity. The home office of scientist and inventor Dr. Givings has become a rendezvous point for a variety of emotionally and sexually repressed women (and one man) seeking treatment via his "electric device."

To Dr. Givings, it's just a medical breakthrough. He underestimates the power of a female orgasm, and his ignorance sets up a variety of feminist-themed domestic issues. And they are messy issues that reveal cracks in the gorgeous, sparkly facade of the sets and wonderfully detailed, conservative period costumes.

Lead actor Joshua Quinn plays Dr. Givings as a sensitive man, who becomes jealous of the power of his own device. Which is easy to understand. His own wife, an attractive and talkative younger woman named Catherine, deems him "inadequate" after only one session with his new machine. But this is also understandable, because it's the 1880s. Catherine is sad because she's unfit to nurse her daughter and thinks she's a bad mother for it, lonely because she has few friends and frustrated with her boring sex life. Dr. Givings is at once sexist and progressive in the way he repeatedly dismisses his wife's needs, but is desperate to help cure "ill" people for the better of society.

Catherine possibly finds the answer to her personal problems while trying to kindle a friendship with her wet-nurse Elizabeth, who was forced to play the part of nanny for no other reason than her child recently died and she's black. Elizabeth harbors a bitterness and a kind of "Wow, you people are weirdos" mentality that elevates the social aspects of the play from silly to surprisingly profound.

Artist Leo Irving and Dr. Givings most frequent patient Sabrina Daldry have similar effects on the audience. Leo is a worldly romantic rival for Dr. Givings and Sabrina's hilarious transformation from tired and hysterical to lively and insatiable could be seen as a metaphor for the benefits of... uh... "electric devices."

Oh, and of course, the props are stunning. They're a little scary in their historical accuracy and not at all sexy or user-friendly like their contemporary counterparts, but they get the job done. What exactly is being "done" to the characters and the effect the props have on them will keep you talking long after you've left the theater.

In The Next Room, or The Vibrator Play runs through February 5, 2012 at Circuit Playhouse.