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A couple of women enjoying brunch at a Manhattan café, talking about men, women, relationships and...vibrators? Sounds like a scene straight out of "Sex and the City." But it's actually Tony-winning actress Laura Benanti (Gypsy) and playwright Sarah Ruhl, engaging in a serious discussion about Ruhl's provocatively titled new comedy, In the Next Room or the vibrator play (in a Broadway production by Lincoln Center Theater at the Lyceum). It marks both Ruhl's debut on the Great White Way and the first time the word vibrator has appeared on a Broadway marquee.

In its early stages, Ruhl called her 19th-century comedy — commissioned by California's Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where it premiered in February — only by its eyebrow-raising subtitle. "I tend to be very utilitarian about titles. If playwrights could be like painters, I would call them Red #1 or Blue #5," she says. "But I didn't want people to think it was just a farce about a sex toy."

"These doctors had no idea that they were doing anything sexual," explains Benanti, who plays Mrs. Givings. "No one did that with their own wife! It's really fascinating. One of the doctors ended up in jail in the 1920s. Once vibrators began appearing in porn films, people realized what they were doing." Adds Ruhl: "Freud even did it early on in his career."

But there's a lot more than electrotherapy going on in Ruhl's play. (And that all happens "in the next room," and discreetly, thank you very much.) "It's about connection and being seen. Beyond the sexual component, I think all people want to be seen for who they really are," says Benanti. Mrs. Givings feels ignored and detached from her baby, who's being fed by a wet nurse (Quincy Tyler Bernstine); Mr. Daldry (Thomas Jay Ryan) yearns for his non-hysterical, piano-playing wife; passionate painter Leo (Chandler Williams) is in search of a muse. "It's about real intimacy, and a deep, soulful understanding beyond what's kind of accepted," says Benanti. "I personally feel like we're in such a pornographic age that nothing shocks us anymore. You walk down the street with a three-year-old and you see Big Booty magazine, and they're like, 'What’s that?' That innocence has been lost."

The characters in the play "are very innocent about sexuality," agrees Ruhl. "That was very interesting to me — to get into that 19th-century mindset. Before magazines recycled the same sex advice week after week." In fact, you'll never even hear the O-word in Ruhl's play — back then, they called it a "paroxysm." And Ruhl wanted to avoid reverting to histrionics; in her stage directions she notes: "There is no cliché…no idea in their heads of how they are supposed to sound." Says Benanti: "I remember being 15 years old and making out with my boyfriend, and in the back of my head, I knew.... I'm not talking about sex — just making out. How you're supposed to pose yourself, supposed to behave." But women in 1880 didn't have Cosmopolitan or Hollywood for guidance. "The Victorian bedroom could have been a very radical, experimental place," says Ruhl, "because who knew what they were doing?"

That could be why, in her research, Ruhl didn't find a surplus of information. "There's one book about the history of the vibrator, one book about the history of wet nursing," she says. "I also read about Victorian marriage and re-read things like 'The Awakening,' just to steep myself in that period."

Unleashing her inner Victorian may have felt natural, but it will surprise anyone who knows Ruhl's work: The Clean House (a depressive Brazilian maid searches for "the funniest joke in the world"), Eurydice (just take an elevator to get to the underworld), Dead Man's Cell Phone (a woman answers a, well…see title).

"When I first started writing plays, I often set them in the past or the underworld so that I could have people talk exactly as I wanted them to," says Ruhl. With In the Next Room, "the subject matter being kind of challenging or radical for some people, I wanted the container to feel very familiar. It's just a costume drama. Here's a rug, here's some wallpaper, and, yes, a vibrator under a sheet, but don't worry about that."

Benanti laughs: "Describing this to my 85-year-old grandma, who I call Mamoo, was my favorite. But she was really fascinated by the idea, with zero judgment."

Ruhl smiles wistfully. "I don't have any live grandparents to tell about the vibrator play. My grandpa saw one of my first plays. He said, 'I'm very proud of you, honey. Next time, write a comedy.' So I think he would be pleased on that level."