A story about a vibrator isn’t one I’d typically share with my grandmother, but I’d feel comfortable taking her to see Sarah Ruhl’s 2009 comedy In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, now on stage at ACT. The clenched fists and ecstatic screams are more for show (that’s what she said?). At its core, the Tony-nominated play is a smart, engaging story about intimacy and sexual freedom in the prim Victorian era—a conversation that’s at the tip of the tongue of every 19th-century housewife perched uncomfortably on her hard-backed sofa.

The stage is set for a farce of Oscar Wilde-ian proportions: Gentlemanly Dr. Givings (Jeff Cummings) has created a device that looks “like a farming tool” to treat women for hysteria. Hysteria can be defined as “every emotion a woman exhibits that appears crazy to a man.” Just administer a quick therapeutic electric massage to release all that pent-up energy in the womb, and patients leave with a healthy, rosy glow and a case of the giggles. It rarely takes more than three minutes.

Pressed with an ear up against the door of the doctor’s office is his savagely bored wife, Catherine Givings (Jennifer Sue Johnson), wondering what all the shouting is about. Johnson is the star of the show as the doctor’s disempowered other half—a vivacious woman who comes second to her husband’s science, swishing manically across the stage in her Victorian gown as she looks for someone—anyone!—to relieve her frustration and loneliness. Will the farming tool succeed where her husband has failed?

It’s a powerful moment when Mrs. Givings begs Dr. Givings not to close his eyes as she undresses, to really look at her in the night’s light (only recently provided by Thomas Edison). A lesser play would have relied too heavily on double entendres and coy smiles, but Ruhl’s script—supported by ACT’s standout cast of patients, nurses, and clueless husbands—allows for some real discussions about finding satisfaction in marriage and self-awareness. What does a woman really want, really need? Same thing a man wants, as it turns out.

In the Next Room, or the vibrator play is at ACT Theatre thru Aug 28.