Laura Benanti and Michael Cerveris to Star in LCT's In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play

Tony Award winners Laura Benanti and Michael Cerveris will co-star in Lincoln Center Theater’s forthcoming Broadway production of Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play. The play will begin previews at the Lyceum Theatre on October 22 and will open on November 19, directed by Les Waters.

The cast will also include Quincy Tyler Bernstine (Ruined), Maria Dizzia (The Drunken City, Ruhl’s Eurydice), Thomas Jay Ryan (The Misanthrope), Wendy Rich Stetson (Hamlet) and Chandler Williams (Mary Stuart, Crimes of the Heart).

Set in the 1880s, In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play centers on a doctor and his wife (played by Cerveris and Benanti) whose household is upended by the doctor’s experimental therapy as inventor of the device mentioned in the title. In the Next Room had its world premiere in February 2009 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. LCT gave Ruhl her New York debut with its off-Broadway production of The Clean House.

Benanti won a Tony Award for playing the title role in Gypsy and received Tony nominations for Into the Woods and Swing. Her Broadway credits include The Wedding Singer, Nine and The Sound of Music. Most recently, she starred in the Public Theater’s off-Broadway production of Christopher Durang’s Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them.

Cerveris won a Tony Award for Assassins and was nominated for Tonys for Sweeney Todd and Lovemusik. His Broadway credits include Hedda Gabler, Cymbeline, Titanic and The Who’s Tommy. Recent off-Broadway credits include the Public Theater's productions of Road Show and King Lear.

The production will have sets by Annie Smart, costumes by David Zinn, lighting by Russell Champa, sound by Bray Poor and original music by Jonathan Bell.