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Not that this is what it's immediately about on the surface. Of top concern is that Louise (Carrie Coon) is a student assistant in a university medical program, which is running a clinical trial for a new drug that supposedly restores interest in sex to women who've lost it. As is typical, the trial is double-blind, and receiving a placebo (or pill without the drug) is a possibility, but because the trial is double-blind, neither Louise nor her patients know who receives what; the only one we meet is the late-40s Mary (a fine Florencia Lozano), who's "lost the desire" for her husband "but not the desire to desire him," as Louise explains it. Her educated understanding of her work does not automatically extend to her personal life. Though Louise appears to get along well with her boyfriend, Jonathan (William Jackson Harper), whose apartment she shares, they're on surprisingly squishy ground: He's a doctoral candidate, currently stuck in the opening stages of writing his dissertation about the ancient Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder, who's also not able to kick his smoking habit. And as his tenure has dragged on (he's in year seven, now) and her own career has moved in different directions, they've become increasingly unable to relate to each other. Plus, Louise's 59-year-old mother was recently sent home from the hospital on an oxygen machine, and is not expected to live, and one of Louise's coworkers, Tom (Alex Hurt), is not so subtly attracted to her. As was the case with her last Playwrights Horizons outing, This (in 2009), Gibson embraces rather than ignores the mundanities present in her premise. But here the approach works, and she's able to successfully contrast both sides of her story without straining it or the tone (one of the key weaknesses with her What Rhymes With America, at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2012). In fact, the two halves support each other beautifully, and Gibson draws clear but understated parallels between the evolving examination of Mary's libido and its impact on her marriage with the similar blocks that are preventing Louise and Jonathan from connecting in a somewhat different way.
Coon, who played Honey in the 2012 Broadway revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, brings a disinterested intelligence to Louise that's as (appropriately) frustrating as it is enveloping. You see her both as a woman capable of good-humored, passionate feeling, and thus someone who could convincingly turn the heads of both the tunnel-focused Jonathan and the more ruggedly free-wheeling Tom (whom Hurt portrays with a winning, if muted, smug satisfaction). But in the moments in which Louise's boundaries are most tested, her desperation is palpable; she's just as dependent on her own blend of fantasy remedies as are the people with whom she works, she's just less prone to recognize them as possibilities. Coon thoroughly embodies every contradiction, beautifully creating a devastatingly real Louise. Almost as good is Harper, who adroitly captures the tense academic malaise afflicting Jonathan, as well as the conflicts between what he wants, what he needs, and his inability to tell the difference. The anger and distance that characterize Harper creep into Jonathan only slowly, but the actor never loses sight of the role's more tender and abused edges, so you're not as put off by Jonathan's behavior as Louise necessarily is. Both the actors more than exceed the roles' requirements, which obscures, but cannot completely cover up, one failing in the writing. Gibson has scripted Jonathan with fewer specific emotional details than Louise, and the most difficult decisions they must make are not always as justified as they could be. Louise has Tom and Mary to reflect the nuances of her current mindset, but Jonathan has no one but Louise. This leads to a somewhat stilted character, and because of it a key plot development—which occurs during a trip the two take together—is not as believably rendered as would be ideal. Even so, the performers and Aukin plow through it, and into the scenes beyond, with a compelling commitment that draws you back into their troubles in no time. So smart and affecting is what Gibson's crafted that you'll be hard pressed to not leave the theater wondering to what degree, if any, the relationships in your own life are fake. Determining that is beyond the scope of the play. What matters, and what's heartbreakingly evident, is that Placebo itself is the real deal.
Placebo
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