Getting Out! by the Standard-Examiner – GO! is a weekly publication serving the Top of Utah.

There are times in history when people disconnect with their animal nature. Such was the Victorian Age, when sexual repression was polished to a high sheen.

In the end, this very repression made everything and nothing about sex. Even couch legs were considered too sexy, and skirts were added for the first time to the parlor seat to keep the erotic wooden shapes under cover, lest the very sight lead a man to madness.

The play "In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play" concerns the household practice of Dr. Givings, a physician of the late 1800s, played by Ogden actor Joe Crnich. He has a medical practice that has embraced the new power of home electricity. He is a true believer in the healing powers of a high-tech massage device for his hysterical patients. Women -- and in one case, a man -- suffering from hysteria are relieved of their stress by the good doctor's machinations.

His wife, Mrs. Givings (Cassandra Stokes-Wylie), a woman with both a curious mind and a prattling tongue, has recently given birth to a daughter she can't seem to produce enough breast milk to feed. Through one of the good doctor's patients, she gains the services of a wet nurse named Elizabeth (Michelle Patrick), a practical woman who suffered the recent loss of her own child.

Clients served by Dr. Giving include a frail and agitated young wife, Mrs. Daldry (Ogden's Holly Fowers), who blossoms under Dr. Giving's treatment. In turn, she develops a crush on Annie, played by Teresa Sanderson of Layton, the medical assistant and midwife who aids the good doctor in his work.

Mrs. Giving suspects something more is happening in her husband's practice than meets the eye, but she hasn't the experience or vocabulary to comes to terms with what she is feeling.

This being a play primarily about orgasms and/or the lack thereof, Pygmalion Productions and the cast and director (Fran Pruyn) handled what could have been an uncomfortable night for more sensitive audience members with deftness and humor.

Though we do peek into both the parlor and surgery of the Giving home (well done to the period by scenic artist John Cook), "patients" were shrouded in both Victorian-era chemises, bloomers, petticoats and slips, as well as sheets and discreet angles.

Humor is at the forefront of this performance, and the cast is very capable, taking their beats and handling their lines with aplomb. The laughter is driven by not just the fine acting, but also the way an audience today sees the fact that such educated people of the day were so out of touch with their own sexuality.

And yet, the ignorance of the characters provides the pathos, too. Mrs. Giving, in particular, in one of funniest parts of the play, is piteous, too -- a bright mind and inquiring nature not taken seriously as a woman in an age where her sex was both pedestaled and ridiculed. Even her husband, a kind man clearly in love with her, is solidly at home in his era, and does not begin to comprehend her struggles.

"In the Next Room" plays today, May 18, and Saturday, May 19, at 8 p.m., with an additional matinee at 3 p.m. Saturday. Cost is $20.

With a strong cast and a solid and funny storyline examining the mores of another era, it is well worth a watch for mature audiences.