Senses are sharpened in Jamie Lloyd’s slick, heady revival of Lucy Prebble’s 2012 play. If the script seems somewhat sober compared with the writer’s recent TV heights of I Hate Suzie and Succession, it remains an intellectually and physically intense experience, with subtle edits that sharpen and freshen the text for a stellar new cast. With heightened attention paid to breath, nerves and touch, The Effect ceaselessly questions which parts of our brains and bodies we can rely on and control.
In a drug trial for a new antidepressant, Tristan (Paapa Essiedu) and Connie (Taylor Russell, in her stage debut) fall in love, but the haze of the trial’s side effects make it impossible to tell how far their attraction is real. Essiedu and Russell are gorgeous together; she holds herself with a controlled stillness, a quiet confidence in her curiosity, while he is looser, bounding around, joking and flirting and quick to fly into fury. Within the claustrophobic space, they gravitate together, the glow of their faces as they lean into each other flooding the clinical stage with warmth.
