‘The staging is used to hide ‘an insubstantial play’ – The Effect evaluation

Lucy Prebble’s four-hander about drug testing in a managed surroundings that premiered in 2012 has misplaced a few of its dramatic lustre.

Now firmly in his minimalist part, director Jamie Lloyd units this revival in an ascetic establishment the place Tristan (Paapa Essiedu) and Connie (Taylor Russell in her skilled stage debut) are keen guinea pigs within the trial of a brand new antidepressant whose aspect impact could reproduce romantic attraction.

While the outside could also be new, the inner debate on overreaching science dates again to Frankenstein and presumably past.

Blazing white lights pour down from a protracted gantry above and from under the rectangular appearing space with audiences seated on both aspect as the 2 paid volunteers grapple with sensations they could by no means have felt with out chemical stimulants.

At one finish of the stage, Dr Lorna James (Michelle Austin) interrogates them on their shifting states of thoughts whereas reverse her Dr Toby Seeley (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) the softly spoken creator of the drug justifies his place in a means that mixes hypocrisy with sophistry.

While Prebble dabbles with the concept that psychological well being is simply as essential as bodily well being – “It’s the same thing” declares Dr Toby addressing the viewers – her conclusions are too apparent to be both satisfying or difficult.

Essiedu dominates the stage because the nervy Tristan, dancing across the extra insular Connie and bringing life and an power to the sterile enterprise that it sorely wants.

Both Austin and Holdbrook-Smith are additionally efficient of their quietly charged encounters that trace at some lengthy buried previous between them.

But the decision shouldn’t be sufficient to warrant the sharp, sometimes histrionic performances and one is left with the suspicion that Lloyd’s staging – vicious lighting, clanking, post-industrial soundscape – is a diversionary tactic designed to hide an insubstantial play.

It’s nearly as if Prebble was impressed initially by Roxy Music after which tried to cowl her tracks. Love is the drug she’s pondering of. 

The Effect, National Theatre till October 7, Tickets: 020 7452 3961