‘The Effect’ Off Broadway Review: Lucy Prebble Delivers a ‘Spellbound’ for the 21st Century

In its annual “31 Days to Oscars” programming, TCM recently aired the Alfred Hitchcock psychoanalysis thriller “Spellbound,” with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck playing lovesick psychiatrists. As one would expect for a movie released in 1945, the movie’s take on psychiatry is rather quaint, but not all that removed from the “Cinderella science” that’s put on stage in Lucy Prebble’s “The Effect.” The National Theatre’s 2023 production of the 2012 play opened Wednesday Off Broadway at The Shed.

Just as psychoanalysis is seen as a cure-all in “Spellbound,” antidepressant drugs are seen as an evil cop-out in “The Effect.” Just as a smitten Bergman is irresponsible for treating Peck’s neurosis, a smitten female psychiatrist (Michele Austin) can’t shake her past affair with a male psychiatrist (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) with whom she’s conducting a drug trial that involves two patients (Paapa Essiedu and Taylor Russell).