Woolly Mammoth's 'In the Next Room'

Let's talk about sex, shall we?

No?

Too awkward?

If you think it's a taboo subject even in the age of Kardashians and sexting, imagine how it might go over if you were a lace-collared lady of the 1800s.

Sarah Ruhl, one of the nation's hottest young playwrights, dares to dream of just such Victorian-era naughtiness in "In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play," which kicks off Woolly Mammoth Theatre's new season Monday. Take the proper-but-fiery women of a Jane Austen novel, add Ruhl's wicked sense of humor and one electrical outlet, and you've got this spirited, funny (and, yes, blush-inducing) play.

"In a way," says Woolly Mammoth artistic director Howard Shalwitz, "you can see the whole women's movement, the whole sexual liberation thing packed into this little play."

(There's also a bit of tasteful nudity and a lot of hanky-panky, but Shalwitz insists that the play is "no nudie show.")

Ruhl has described "In the Next Room" as "a play hovering at the dawn of electricity." The current runs through the playwright's meticulously factual fantasy, in which Edison's invention has allowed one particularly dedicated physician to create an electrical device sure to cure the litany of ailments -- malaise, crying fits, you name it -- plaguing his female patients.

Spoiler alert: It buzzes.

And the buzz, promises the good doctor, is just what the soul ordered; in a short few moments, it'll produce a "paroxysm," relieving a patient of all of her pent-up, er, stress.

The doctor's work is performed in an in-home "operating theater" -- dubbed "the next room." It is only a matter of time before his wife wants to know what the heck is going on in there.

"In the Next Room," which was produced on Broadway last year, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize as well as a Tony Award, but Shalwitz had spotted Ruhl's talents long before.