The Effect, by Lucy Prebble [Auckland Theatre Company]
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A sizzling chemistry lesson from Succession’s writer, Lucy Prebble, on whether love sits in the heart or in the brain.
“I’ll tell you what I want. I don’t want to reason with you. I want to know right now, in this moment, what you feel.”
When Connie and Tristan sign up for a clinical trial to test a new antidepressant, they fall for each other. Hard. Sealed off from the outside world, they’re ready to break all the rules. But are their feelings real or nothing more than a side effect from the drug that’s firing a dopamine hit to their brains?
British playwright Lucy Prebble shows all the razor-sharp flair that made her a star writer on the smash hit Succession in this deft dissection of medical ethics and the nature of human attraction – fresh from a critically acclaimed 2023 season at London’s National Theatre.
As the couple’s illicit romance throws the trial off course, tensions flare between the two supervising psychiatrists, who turn out to have a messy history of their own.
And, as both the dosage of the drug and the emotional stakes increase, a wider debate plays out on the medicalisation of depression for profit by the pharmaceutical industry. “There’s no such thing as side effects. They’re just effects you can’t sell.”
A provocative delve into the mysteries of human attraction, this chemical romance keeps you guessing as it asks which is more powerful – the head or the heart?