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After seeing a production of Lucy Prebble’s The Effect in Orlando earlier this year, I found myself unable to resist conducting my own little theatrical experiment when it popped up in South Florida at the Lake Worth Playhouse’s Stonzek Theatre. And I’m describing it that way because The Effect is a play about an experiment—specifically, a clinical trial of a powerful new antidepressant.
First performed in 2012, this rich and thought-provoking piece follows a pair of twenty-somethings named Connie and Tristan. For four weeks, the two will serve as test subjects for the drug in question, which works by flooding their systems with adrenaline.
Chemically, this causes them to feel an elevated mood that at times manifests as anxiety and at times look closer to euphoria. Confined together in close quarters as their dosages slowly escalate, Connie and Tristan begin a clandestine affair with one another.
The primary question that The Effect asks about these characters is whether their feelings for one another are based in real passion or pharmaceutical placebo. That the audience buy into the outsized chemistry between the two characters is key to selling the crowd on the whole of the show’s premise. And it’s here that I’m pleased to report that this iteration of the play most obviously outshone the last production I covered.
With actors Ted Luxana and Olivia Speer taking on the lead roles of Tristan and Connie, the couple’s magnetic pull towards one another was immediately palpable and consistently electric.
Both performers were also incredibly strong actors in their own right, navigating the emotional and chemical roller coaster the play sends them on with measured intensity rather than over-the-top theatrics. The two’s star power in the play’s meatiest roles is immediately impressive, and only grows more so as their circumstances escalate.
For supporting players Mike Schmidt and J. B Wing, as two doctors playing different roles in the oversight of the trial, it’s a slower build. Their characters are less immediately compelling, but gradually become more so as the script reveals their hidden depths.
Schmidt plays Dr. Toby Sealy, a drug developer who devised the trial; and Wing is Dr. Lorna James, who is the head clinician managing it day to day. Both performances grew on me over the course of the play, but because Schmidt is more commanding from the start, Wing’s did so more noticeably.
I initially misread the awkward energy that she exuded in the part as being at odds with her character’s role as the trial’s reigning authority figure.
But as the play expands to encompass her character’s personal history with mental illness, it started to feel more like a deliberate and touching choice on Wing’s part to foreground Lorna’s vulnerability even when she tries to present herself as the neutral professional. When the character’s thin facade eventually cracks entirely, it feels like something that Wing as a performer was building the foundation for all along.
While still featuring a relatively minimalist set, this production also felt more technically clean and atmospherically apt than in my initial viewing. A neutral set with institutional vibes is a sufficient backdrop for all the interpersonal action, and the biggest design issue I found to nitpick actually amused me more than anything.
During an in-show dramatization of a psychological test taken by Connie and Tristan, they are made to guess the color of certain words that are projected onto a backdrop— but the colors of the words seemed just a shade off from what the dialogue suggests.
This funny little quirk of visible imperfection stood out all the more in the otherwise polished production, which director Lara Williams seems to have spearheaded with aplomb. Here, the execution was closer to on par with the script’s masterful storytelling, which utilizes the differing perspectives of its four well-developed characters to explore a provocative set of philosophical ideas.
For only four more performances scheduled between tonight and this Sunday, March 29th, you have the exciting chance to involve yourself as an observer of this powerful theatrical experiment. I’d recommend going into The Effect with a willingness to be affected by its admittedly unsettling but ultimately satisfying story.
It’s hard to say if my reaction to the play would have been quite so unambiguously positive if I weren’t so personally fascinated with some of the themes of said story. But in my book, any South Florida theatregoers in the market for a stirring straight play this weekend could scarcely make a better choice.
The post A Successful Experiment in ‘The Effect’ At Lake Worth Playhouse appeared on South Florida Theater.
