| David Cromer directed this here in 2016 and now Jamie Lloyd takes a shot. The play is still muddled and simplistic, but Lloyd, an auteur director, really goes to town with it. THE EFFECT poses its reductive questions—in the development of personhood, what is cause and what is effect?—but Lloyd distracts from this expedient but trite inquiry by submerging it in effects of his own: severe lighting, ambient underscoring and preternatural sound design. An anti-depressant drug trial that confines its participants to a “mental asylum” is simply ludicrous so why not gussy things up a bit? This sound and fury approach distracts from the play’s weaknesses to a point, but it doesn’t disguise them. Lloyd stuffs SUNSET BOULEVARD, another mediocre property, into a similar glittery dress and transforms it. But here it’s just window dressing; the play is still, unfortunately, the thing. |
