'The Effect' review: Dissecting the science of desire
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Thursday, November 21, 2024


'The Effect' review: Dissecting the science of desire
From left: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Paapa Essiedu, Taylor Russell and Michele Austin in “The Effect” at the Shed in Manhattan, March 2, 2024. In Jamie Lloyd’s revival of Lucy Prebble’s play, Essiedu and Russell are a couple who fall in love during a pharmaceutical trial. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

by Naveen Kumar



NEW YORK, NY.- A white plastic bucket sits on a spare stage at the Shed, where director Jamie Lloyd’s stark, riveting production of “The Effect” opened Wednesday night. By the time its content — a human brain — is revealed, Lucy Prebble’s heady and scintillating drama is already interrogating the biology of desire.

What begins as the drug trial of an antidepressant shifts into more slippery territory when a flirtation develops between two of the participants. As they circle each other, neurons blazing, questions swirl about whether their attraction has been chemically engineered — and if love controls the mind or the other way around.

The simplicity of a brain plopped in a pail for scientific research becomes something of a mordant sight gag.

Previously staged off-Broadway in 2016, “The Effect” digs into what one of the study’s architects calls “nothing short of a revolution in medicine”: drug intervention that considers the psyche a plastic aspect of the self. Lloyd’s production, which premiered in August at the National Theater in London, poses the play’s philosophical inquiries on a stark and minimal plane that feels both cosmic and atomically intimate.

During the experiment’s intake, we learn that Connie (Taylor Russell) gets sad but isn’t depressed (“when I’m sad, I’m sad,” she says) and that Tristan (Paapa Essiedu) has a playful swagger, half-flirting with the study’s administrator, Dr. Lorna James (a game and frank Michele Austin), while she asks about his medical history.

When Tristan meets Connie, he offers to turn in the urine sample she’s holding: “How about I take your piss for you?” (Props, aside from the bucket and brain, are mimed.) “You need to drink more water,” she observes, looking at his own.

Their exchanges are framed, on an elevated platform with the audience seated on either side, as a behavioral study stripped of context and identity markers. Dressed in lumpy, cloud-white sweatsuits, and often confined to separate glowing squares on the stage, they relate to each other — and to Lorna’s surveilling questions — from within a pressurized void. (The set and costumes are by Soutra Glimour, the lighting by Jon Clark.)

The intricate and mesmerizing character portraits that emerge are entirely relational, defined in response to external stimuli. (The presence of other trial participants goes unremarked upon.) The clinical setting and escalating doses are tightly controlled by Lorna and her supervising colleague, Dr. Toby Sealey (a suave and gravel-voiced Kobna Holdbrook-Smith), constant observers seated at either end of the platform. But what about the reaction between two people?

Essiedu’s Tristan is roving, loose-limbed and solicitous. A Hackney native and a regular on the pharmaceutical trial circuit, he instinctively goads the more watchful and considered Connie, a psychology student from Ontario who is studying in London, where the play is set. Russell’s Connie is discerning, logic-driven, warm and curious.

Even as the play explores the conundrum of its causation, the affair between Tristan and Connie bristles with heat, its own natural phenomenon.

Both performances are superb, particularly as the characters progress through a fast-burning romance. The first time they touch, he’s inviting her to dance with no music. Ribbing and affectionate, they mimic each other’s accents — further collapsing the distance between them. Essiedu is sly and agile, like an amorous cartoon cat sauntering on hind legs. Russell has the softness and hard will of Viola or Juliet, her voice pillowy with grace and acuity.

Lloyd, whose austerity sent a pulsating current through last season’s Broadway revival of “A Doll’s House,” casts Tristan and Connie’s love story as a sci-fi thriller, emphasizing contrasts between light and darkness, hard-edged facts and the messy unknowns of erotic impulse. Lingering billows of fog indicate the uncertainty of perception, while a faint, propulsive score by Michael Asante (and sound design by George Dennis) seems determined to sync the heart rates of everyone in earshot.

The arguments that fuel Prebble’s rapid-fire dialogue demonstrate a razor wit — she was a writer and producer on “Succession” — and a deft hand at splicing theory and behavior. And she excels at articulating ineffable states of feeling. (Connie says the drug’s effects are “like having the weather inside.”)

A soapy back story between the two psychiatrists, though excellently conveyed by Austin and Holdbrook-Smith, feels a bit contrived. But their debates about the ethics of manipulating the mind — and whether a person’s nature is even susceptible to change — deepens the stakes of their inquiry. The ex-lovers’ positioning at either end of the stage underlines the notion that desire is as much about separation — not having the thing you want — as it is fulfillment.

Science, like love, is an infallibly human endeavor. Whatever we think we know, particularly about the nature of consciousness, is shaped by our subjectivity. But we can only really know ourselves in relation to other people. Otherwise we might as well be a bunch of brains floating in space.



‘The Effect’

Through March 31 at the Shed, Manhattan; theshed.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

March 15, 2024

Klimt landscape show is more, and less, than expected

Modern & Contemporary Art, Live auction to be held at Sotheby's Cologne, Palais Oppenheim

All roads led to Vegas for Morphy's smash $4.26M Automobilia & Petroliana Auction

Heard Museum announces opening of major exhibition, Maria & Modernism

New acquisitions at Mia strengthen collections of Native American, Latin American, and Tibetan Buddhist art, among other

Perrotin opens an exhibition featuring a selection of recent pigment paintings by Thilo Heinzmann

Seattle University to receive $300 million art collection

Len Sirowitz, whose bold, offbeat ads captured an era, dies at 91

The designer who makes movie posters worthy of museums

PAI's 92nd Rare Posters Auction garners $1.6M in sales

Alexis Ralaivao joins Kasmin

Artifacts of Hollywood & Music announced: The Collection of "Shaft" and other Hollywood highlights

An artist's response to a racist mural walks a fine line

Artists and speakers withdraw from SXSW over U.S. Military's support of Israel

Anna Wintour sings! (sort of.)

The conflict at the heart of the Galliano documentary

'The Effect' review: Dissecting the science of desire

With humor, Kobi Libii gives his characters a different superpower

The Cope Collection: Rare coins bearing witness to powerful moments in British and Roman history to be auctioned

Will she make the next Birkin?

Clars Auction Gallery announces Spring Modern + Contemporary Art + Design Auction

Trending at the Oscars, brooches for men

Los Angeles Opera's music director to step down after 20 years

New Colby Museum exhibition offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of celebrated, departed art magazine Esopus

Natural Beauty Remedies: DIY Treatments for Glowing Skin and Hair

Safe and Secure: Choosing Bangladeshi Online Casinos




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Holistic Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful