“A Leasing of Bodies”: Race, Medicine, and Radical Care in Jamie Lloyd’s Revival of Lucy Prebble’s The Effect

British director Jamie Lloyd’s 2023 revival of Lucy Prebble’s 2012 play The Effect re-frames the play’s contemplation of love and medicine in racialized terms. The Effect follows two volunteers who fall in love during a drug trial and two doctors who monitor them. Featuring an all-Black cast, Lloyd’s revival evokes the troubling history of medical experimentation on Black bodies while also modelling ethical and racially conscious care. As the Black cast was encouraged to bring personal aspects of their own lives into the production, Prebble’s original text is moulded to the myriad lived experiences of Black persons in the diaspora in the 2023 revival. By using Christina Sharpe’s theory of the wake and Harriet Washington’s history of medical apartheid, applied on a broader, global diasporic scale, this article traces key moments in the revival that were tailored to the Black actors’ positionality. These approaches open The Effect to further discussions of race, medicine, and the practice of a radical, ethical model of care that is deeply human.