Lucy Prebble, who fiercely took on big business in the rousing Enron, is now grappling with science and scientific experimentation. She targets it in The Effect, an impressive, if not entirely convincing, production, directed fiercely by David Cromer. He's doing his handiwork at the Barrow Street Theatre, where he fared so well with Our Town and Tribes.
The experiment conducted by colleagues and eventually more-than-colleagues Dr. Lorna James (Kati Brazda) and Dr. Toby Sealey (Steve Key) involves male and female volunteers taking increasing doses of some unidentified substance as it affects their -- well, don't ask exactly what it's meant to affect. The exact purpose of the experiment -- something about risk-taking, I think -- remained elusive.
What is more pertinent to Prebble is the interplay between the professionals and the volunteers and how the not entirely clear developments ultimately shape the all-important experiment. Although there are something like 10 men and 10 woman swallowing the dosages and walking around with heart monitors attached to them, the only ones watched here on set designer Marsha Ginsberg's properly antiseptic laboratory halls are Connie Hall (Susannah Flood) and Tristan Frey (Carter Hudson).
Tristan and Connie -- who has a boyfriend traveling and is therefore free to join the weeks-long experiment -- meet cute during their preliminary vetting. After she doesn't initially take to his supposed sense of humor, they fall in love. When this occurred, I ought to admit that it struck me as if the experiment, however it was explained to the volunteers (or not explained), was really meant to plumb the causes of love and whether the emotion can be manipulated through scientific fiddling.
Turns out I was wrong about the first-act-ending spin -- but not entirely. I was right that the experiment's purpose isn't precisely as expressed but is rigged to explore other reactions -- reactions not only among the volunteers but also among the participating experimenters.
Going into too many details on that score would run into spoilers, but it isn't too much to say that, as in many experiments, some of the volunteers are revealed to be taking the tested substance, while some are on placebos. It's along these lines that Prebble stalks the examined undertaking in a way that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, where plays of this nature are backed, might have thought twice had the manuscript been sent to them.
It's surely also safe to say that as the Connie-Tristan romance intensifies, the lovers break the experiment rules that have been drilled into them. Dr. James sees that the same eight hours of heart patterns for both Connie and Tristan are missing and rightly concludes that sexual activity has compromised the experiment. She further decides that, though Tristan, whom she knows to be on the placebo, can stay, Connie, who isn't, must leave.
This early second-act plot spin leads to a Dr. James-Connie confrontation wherein the professional spills some personal information about her bouts with depression. (Perhaps Lorna James should have been named Forlorna James.) The outcome, leading to Dr. James allowing Connie to stay, prompts an equally fired discussion between Drs. James and Sealey. In order to make his censuring point to Dr. James, Dr. Sealey discloses information about the experiment that comes as disturbing news to his long-time friend.
That's when Prebble gets highly dramatic with repercussions to all the vouchsafed info and, as it happens, even to some misinformation bandied about. Again, saying more would spoil the angry fun concerned playwright Prebble has with medical experimentation and the extent to which she questions its potentially positive gains. To that end, Dr. James spouts one of the best lines when she declares that scientific experimentation ultimately amounts to "the history of placebos."
Yes, the playwright has tough beliefs on which she wants to expound. She's so riled up that she presents the kind of devastating results of this experiment's effect(s) by relying heavily on the Tristan and Connie (as opposed to Tristan and Isolde) affair. Perhaps it's mitigating to ask why anyone falls in love with anyone, but in a play of this nature, it's an obligation to show the progression rather than though audience-neglecting shorthand.
Prebble doesn't quite achieve that goal. The abrupt Connie-Tristan shift from wary co-participants to passionate rule-breakers surprised me, as, I'd wager, it surprised other patrons. (This is why I concluded incorrectly that those increasingly strong doses were the cause.) The impromptu liaison asks for suspension of disbelief, which I'm willing to extend for the sake of Prebble's larger thesis, but I'd just as soon not have had to.
(Incidentally, projection designer Maya Ciarrocchi aims a good deal of the Connie-Tristan lovemaking larger-than-life on one of the set's tall panels. Why? Maybe it's Cromer's desire to keep pace with current projections-happy stage elements.)
With George Demas, who has the silent role of laboratory assistant, the actors are commendable. Frey is on top of Tristan's boyish quirks and is also ready for the character's darker twists. Flood rises to the right heights when fighting for Connie's place in the experiment. As Dr. James, Brazda meets Prebble's well-written requirements as a manic-depressive. Key blends Dr. Sealey's skill at scientific commitments with the blithe womanizer he's also shown to be.
The pull of The Effect is in its recognizing that often supposed controlled experimentation can't be controlled. Its effects can be far from those aimed for. She's suggesting that experiments must be thoroughly thought through before being pursued -- certainly for their moral implications. It's a worthy take on a phenomenon that has become a pressing issue for several contemporary dramatists -- an issue covered earlier this season in Frank Basloe's strong Please Continue. The only thing to say to Prebble, Basloe and colleagues is, Please continue.