By Sarah Ruhl. Directed by Keltie Forsyth. An Ensemble Theatre Company production, as part of its Summer Repertory Festival. At the Jericho Arts Centre on Thursday, July 20. Continues until August 17

In the Next Room celebrates the many gifts of electricity, but fails to make sparks of its own.

Sarah Ruhl’s script features the aptly named Dr. Givings, a late-19th-century doctor who treats patients for hysteria using “therapeutic electrical massage”—an early form of the vibrator—in the operating theatre, “the next room” in his home. His wife, Catherine, a new mother, gets to watch satisfied patients coming and going from their treatments, while languishing from a lack of emotional and physical attention from her husband, a self-professed “man of science” who reveres the gift of electricity. Desperate for emotional connection, she befriends one patient, Mrs. Daldry—whose housekeeper, Elizabeth, becomes the Givings’s wet nurse—and flirts with another, Leo, a romantic painter, as her curiosity about her husband’s miraculous treatments deepens into obsession.

Ruhl’s script attempts to cram a lot of social commentary—racism, male denial of women’s sexuality, and technological progress are all repeatedly ticked—into a scenario whose contrivances become increasingly strained as the plot clunks along. Events are driven entirely by entrances and exits; characters are prone to breaking into prolonged philosophical monologues that have little to do with what’s happening in the moment; and how many times do we need to watch people brought to orgasm in the treatment room? It’s amusing the first couple of times, but the device becomes repetitive.

Under Keltie Forsyth’s direction, the actors display varying levels of comfort with Ruhl’s stilted, faux-period dialogue. Sebastian Kroon’s intellectually enthusiastic but emotionally clueless Dr. Givings inhabits the words with conviction, and as his assistant, Annie, Alexis Kellum-Creer is calmly understated. Christine Reinfort’s Mrs. Daldry is sympathetic in both her pre- and post-treatment emotional states, and Francis Winter makes the caddish dandy, Leo, eminently likable. The big hole in this production is the central character, Catherine: Lindsay Nelson’s line readings are so flat that we can only deduce her feelings from the text rather than from an emotionally grounded performance.

Lauchlin Johnston’s set is handsomely functional, showcasing the technological wonders of both an electric lamp and the doctor’s hilariously cumbersome devices. But their entertainment value diminishes long before the curtain falls.