Jamie Lloyd's revival of THE EFFECT to play The Shed (w/ Paapa Essiedu & Taylor Russell) — Page 2

GENIUS. What an amazing night of theater.

Very short run --- rush to see it. It's great

Glad I caught this.

Taylor Russell is a star.

The sound design in Jamie Lloyd productions is impeccable.

I enjoyed it but the play outshines the direction. It would have been much clearer if we actually had a set and props. And natural human behavior. Theres a fight over a cell phone and I didn’t know who ended up with it because we don’t see any of that. And it’s like this throughout. If you miss one line, you’re f*cked. Nothing else helping with the storytelling. I thought this type of direction really worked for dolls house, and not so much here. Did the female doctor take her medicine at the end? I wasn’t sure if she still believed in it anymore.

I've been trying to come to terms with how I feel about this play because I think I like the play itself more than the direction--I've had no prior experience with it but I certainly appreciate a lot of the issues and questions it raises, and I think each character is really interesting in its own way. The actors themselves are all fantastic, and the show certainly screams high production value despite its lack of set/props (though some fantastic lighting work). I just think the overall result felt almost too clinical to me (and I loved A Doll's House).

The play is about a drug trial so I can see how it being "clinical" would be on purpose, but I always felt like I was at a bit of a remove from the characters and while I think they were well written and wonderfully acted, I never really cared about them or felt like I was personally invested in their outcomes. It's also highly possible that that's just something I need to really enjoy a show that isn't a hindrance for other people, and while I found the ending beautiful, I didn't feel particularly moved by it.

The other part of the show is that the central question is how much the main love story is something manufactured by the drug or something that occurred naturally, and whether it even matters. The scenes of passion felt so manic that it seemed like it just had to be a result (at least partially) of the drug, though that came into a bit of conflict when they started questioning whether one of them was on a placebo. I think the sparseness of the design also made it difficult to ascertain what other factors could have led to such an outsized response--I assume the isolation plays a part in their connection to each other, but having no contrast between what it was like within the clinic and "normal life" didn't really highlight that point, because within the world of the show, everything is the same regardless of where they are. (I half-jokingly wonder if Jamie Lloyd ever considered a Doll's House-like ending for this show.)

In a way, I think the two facilitators felt more real to me (possibly also by design? If it's intended that we take the point of view of an objective party observing the experiment, it would make sense that we can empathize with the others running the experiment more), and I found the undertones of their relationship with each other and also with depression and drugs overall fascinating. They seemed to be more grounded and have real lives outside of the setting of the trial, whereas Connie and Tristan almost seemed like they existed only in the trial (I know the script includes some of their backstory and they do talk about their lives before they came to the clinic, but for some reason I just didn't seem to be able to fully internalize that, though in a way I think that made the ending more poignant for me as well).

I kind of wish I had seen the original run of this play just because I feel like I would've responded differently with a different style of direction, but I do think the play itself is fascinating, and it seems like this production does work for a lot of other people. Also, I was the third row back (though it's labeled row B) and the stage is somewhat high so I think it might've been more comfortable one or two rows further back (I like to be looking slightly down at the stage deck), but the view was fine and it wasn't like I was craning my neck or anything, so I think others would find it a perfectly good seat.

Hey so I made an error. I'm coming into the city this week to see this and a few other things. I never bought these tickets because it wasn't close to sold out so it wasn't on my radar. But now I went to buy them and they're sold out for the rest of the run. Woops.

I can't find any info anywhere on standing room or rush or lottery or anything. Does any know any other ways of getting into this show?