Paul Rush delivers one of the most electrifying performances I’ve seen this past year opposite a captivating, compelling Jackie Jandrell in Sixty-Six Productions’ Los Angeles Premiere of Lucy Prebble’s The Effect.

Rush and Jandrell share the Marilyn Monroe Theatre stage as Tristan and Connie, volunteers in a clinical trial of a new antidepressant drug, whose mutual attraction just might be love.

Then again, it could simply be the side-effect of a drug that’s being administered to them day after day in steadily increasing doses.

Charting their progress is Dr. Lorna James (Leah Verrill), whose own history of clinical depression may well have been exacerbated by a long-ago love affair with Dr. Toby Sealey (John Ruby), now supervising both the drug trials and Lorna herself.

A 2012 National Theatre hit that’s been Americanized for US audiences, The Effect asks provocative questions about medical ethics (Is it right to ask vulnerable volunteers like Connie and Tristan to serve as human guinea pigs?), the causes of depression (Is it the result of unfortunate circumstances or merely a chemical imbalance in the brain?), and the very nature of love itself (As Cole Porter once put it, “Just who can solve its mystery? Why should it make a fool of me?”).

Complicating the test subjects’ budding relationship is Tristan’s certainty that his feelings for Connie are real, and hers that their mutual attraction stems from nothing more than a drug-induced dopamine high.

Add to that the likelihood that one or both of them may be on a placebo even as the dosage they are being given rises steadily (and possibly dangerously) from an initial 25 mg a day to ten times that amount, and you have the recipe for dramatic fireworks, with just enough dark humor to spice up the mix.

Kymberly Harris directs with confidence and flair, and she is rewarded with four terrific performances, in particular Rush’s spellbinding star turn as Tristan, whose romantic, sexual chemistry with Jandrell’s sizzling but vulnerable Connie is quite simply off the charts.

Verrill and Ruby provide topnotch support throughout, she as a psychiatrist whose stability may be as fragile as her test subjects’ (Verrill’s dark turn in Act Two is a stunner) and he as a man whose insides might not match his GQ exterior.

Sixty-Six Productions’ in-house production design is Grade A all the way, from Eli Smith’s nifty set with its side-by-side “dorm rooms” and upstage lab to Soran Schwartz’s dramatic lighting and ingenious projections to Trevor Reece’s mood-enhancing sound design to producer Trina Chen’s just-right costumes.

Jake Ryan Lindsey is stage manager. Natalie Gimon and Carina Haller are assistant producers. The Effect features original music by Jordan Halper Schwartz.

It’s been two-and-a-half years since Sixty-Six Productions gave Lee Blessing’s For The Loyal a “provocative, edge-of-your-seat, ripped from today’s headlines” West Coast Premiere, even more reason to celebrate the company’s return to live productions. The Effect is L.A. intimate theater at its most thrillingly, arrestingly effective.

Marilyn Monroe Theatre, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood.
www.sixtysixtheater.com

–Steven Stanley
May 6, 2022

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Lucy Prebble, Marilyn Monroe Theatre, Sixty-Six Theater Co.