Ruth Leon recommends… The Effect – National Theatre

The Effect – National Theatre

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There are fashions in stage direction as in everything else. Only when you’ve seen several plays by the same director can you begin to recognise their individual obsessions.

Ah yes, you say, Ivo Van Hove is the one who uses live videographers filming the action and projects the video onstage in real time, ignoring the text of whatever classic play he’s directing. (See All About Eve). And isn’t Katie Mitchell the one who inserts ballroom dancing into almost every production, even those set in times when it hadn’t been invented, such as the Greek tragedies? (See Iphigenia). And aren’t her actors often directed to play in near-dark with their backs to the audience? (See The Seagull)

And what about Jamie Lloyd? Isn’t he the one who strips the play of all and any distractions? His productions usually have no sets or costumes, no sense of period, just the actors and the words. See (Hamlet and Cyrano).

Lucy Prebble’s The Effect at the National is, like all Jamie Lloyd’s productions, relentlessly modern and lacking any accompanying visual stimulation. It’s a relief to note that it’s set in the present or near future and therefore doesn’t need to be robbed of its period or theatrical trimmings like Sunset BlvdorCyrano.

 The Effect is a morality tale disguised as a medical mystery wrapped in a love story about two young volunteers in a clinical drug trial. The supervising doctors have the unenviable task of working out whether their sudden and intoxicating chemistry is real, or a side effect of the new antidepressant they’re there to test.

This somewhat cool plot, heated by the fire between the two young people, poses startling dilemmas when considering the ethics of how new drugs get to be tested, developed, and delivered to the public.

The unmissable Paapa Essiedu who seemed to be up and coming only moments ago, is now fully up and arrived, and is here paired with Taylor Russell  in this funny and intimate examination of love and ethics. They have nothing to work with but the play itself and Jamie Lloyd’s total conviction that this is all they need.

Van Hove is now focused on deconstructing operas. His latest, Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, was a great success at the Flemish Opera Antwerp/Ghent. His version of West Side Story, however, was not.

Katie Mitchell is currently a Professor of Theatre Directing at the University of London where her uncompromising modernistic style is much appreciated.

Jamie Lloyd’s Sunset Boulevard is heading for Broadway.

The National Theatre is being coy about releasing this play worldwide so it may not yet be available in the United States but, be patient, it soon will be.

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