A Tony Award nominee for best play and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, “In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play)” is set in the late 1800s, when doctors used the newfangled vibrator as a clinical treatment for hysteria. Sexually frustrated with their husbands, Sabrina and Catherine experience their first orgasms with the machine, inspiring both jealousy and passion in their marriages. The play features actors Larry Cook, Maura Burroughs, Laine Satterfield, Lauren Leinhaas-Cook, Adrian Rieder, Stephanie Hill and Andrew Boothby and, perhaps unsurprisingly, contains nudity and sexual content. “In the Next Room” opens at the Theatre Gym at Virginia Repertory Center on Thursday, Aug. 16, and runs through Sept. 8. $19-$26. va-rep.org.