It may seem like the world of experimental medical research doesn't have much to say to the world of theatre, but Lucy Prebble sees connections. Both require subjects and observers, both take place within a carefully controlled environment, and both depend on a certain amount of luck.
“The more I thought about it, the more I thought, 'That's what we do,'” said Prebble, a British playwright and screenwriter.
In 2006, Prebble became fascinated with one failed medical trial in particular, in which six healthy young British men experienced multiple organ failure after taking a novel drug. The incident partly inspired “The Effect,” Prebble's play about two participants in a drug trial that alters the course of their lives. First produced in 2012 at the National Theater in London (and performed in New York at the Barrow Street Theater in 2016), it was revived there last fall and will come to New York on March 3 for a limited participation in the Shed.
Like the London revival, the New York presentation will star Paapa Essiedu (“I May Destroy You,” “Black Mirror”) and Taylor Russell (“Waves,” “Bones and All”) as Tristan and Connie, two people of different class. backgrounds with almost opposite personalities who are administered an antidepressant with the potential to induce feelings of love. When the drug proves stronger than expected (testing the boundary between love and mania), the trial administrators (played by Michele Austin and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) fight to keep it from spiraling out of control.
“They know what they feel but they don't know why they feel it,” Essiedu said of Tristan and Connie. “Are you experiencing a billion-dollar thing? Or will it be here today and gone tomorrow?
Prebble wrote the play while dealing with his own grief and what he described as a bout of depression.
“I became very interested in what was real and what was not, in what was love and what was false euphoria,” he said. “I wanted to see if I could replicate that feeling in a theatrical experience.”
Directed by Jamie Lloyd, known for his bracing modernist style (“A Doll's House” with Jessica Chastain, “Cyrano de Bergerac” with James McAvoy), the revival is as sleek and shiny as a pill capsule. Thanks to a scrapped intermission and other edits Lloyd made in collaboration with Prebble, the show is now 100 minutes long, nearly 20 percent shorter than the original production.
There are few props and no costume changes, and the lighting design, by Jon Clark, augments a basic set, with a combination of spotlights and illuminated floor panels creating the impression of multiple rooms.
“The great thing about Jamie is that everything comes from this deep, authentic desire within him to find what's necessary,” Russell said. “It's never, 'Let's be radical this way or that way.' It's: 'How can we let our imagination be the center of attention here? What does it contribute or subtract from that?'”
Prior to the London performance, Russell had never performed professionally on stage. She sought the role after falling in love with the script and read for Lloyd in New York during his Broadway production of “A Doll's House” last spring.
Coming from a film background, where each day on set is different from the last, Russell worried that he would find the repetition of theater stultifying. But, on the contrary, he said the experience has brought a new sense of freedom to his work.
“You walk on stage and you have no idea what's going to happen,” he said. “It doesn't matter if you feel good or bad, or you didn't prepare enough or you hated your last performance, you just have to keep going.”
Essiedu, who in 2016 became the first black actor to play Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company, said he was drawn to the play's rigorous ambiguity. It is suggested early on that Tristan or Connie may be receiving a placebo, leaving the audience to guess which feelings are “real” and which are being chemically enhanced.
When that mystery is solved, others emerge. What was this medication really designed for? And what is happening between the two administrators?
“I couldn't determine if it was a tragedy or a triumph,” Essiedu said of reading the play. “Even now, after doing it for two months, I never settle for what I believe; sometimes I think it's one thing, sometimes I think it's the other.”
Prebble, who was a writer and executive producer of “Succession,” a show famous for its volatile mix of tragedy and comedy, said she tends to lean toward tragedy in her own writing.
“There's an argument that tragedy is the most optimistic form of art,” he said. “Comedy essentially doesn't allow for change because it has to constantly reset. But in tragedy change is possible. In the end, everything is different from where it started.”
The characters in the play have undergone some evolution since it was first performed more than a decade ago. Connie and Tristan, originally from Great Britain and Ireland, are now from Canada and East London, where Russell and Essiedu grew up. And a pivotal dance that Tristan uses to charm Connie has been changed from Irish tap to a hip-hop shimmy, modeled by Essiedu (in collaboration with movement directors Sarah Golding and Yukiko Masui) after shows by Childish Gambino and Tyler the Creator.
For the New York presentation, Prebble said he will make some additional changes — to contextualize some culturally specific references, for example — but will preserve key character and plot details. (Is there a difference between American and British audiences? “In Britain, they laugh a little earlier,” Prebble said. “It's almost preemptive, like they want to play the joke in their own head or let you know to look at what they're saying.) is about to happen.
And as with any play (or scientific experiment), the real breakthroughs are the ones you don't expect.
“It needs to be allowed to change and be specific to the moment,” Essiedu said. “If you're chasing the high you had before, it's never going to work.”
