Jessie Lawrence ably evokes the anxiety and desire of a pleasant but untrusted flirtation. Photo / Andi Crown
Jessie Lawrence ably evokes the anxiety and desire of a pleasant but untrusted flirtation. Photo / Andi Crown
In this beautifully written four-hander, UK playwright Lucy Prebble offers some great organ-based imagery for love and depression: "I've built a bit of my brain around you" says one character, meaning it semi-literally.
During more than two hours, two human guinea pigs and their researchers converse naturally about whether humans(and by extension, love) are chemical or more mysterious; whether depression is a disease to be medicated or a symptom suggesting a life needs change. Which moods and actions are authentically ours, and which can we blame on pills or illness - and does it even matter?
Known for big, bold interpretations of Shakespeare and Wilde, producers Fractious Tash and director Benjamin Henson shift gears to bring wonderful pinpoint focus to intense relationships. Jessie Lawrence, opposite an also excellent Daniel Watterson, manages to express the anxiety, reluctance and desire of an enjoyable but untrusted flirtation all at once.
Fittingly for a drug trial setting, the stage has an exposed, clinical feel: the audience in the round help put characters under the microscope. Te Aihe Butler and Robin Kelly's sound design uses low rumbles and brief horror-pitch stings to highlight tension.
The rest of the design isn't quite so distilled: light bounces off the reflective stage into audience eyes. But Lara Liew's movement brings interest to the monitoring and love montages.
The "science" tests suspension of disbelief: the play is ignorant of double-blind trials, and there's an odd mention of the trial drug increasing people's height.
More jarringly, the play loses interest in its own themes well before the audience does: the epilogue, about a different type of challenge to identity, seems to have wandered into this script by mistake.
But The Effect still satisfies with great lines (on feeling wired: "I feel like life is paying attention to me") and a believable portrayal of a deep connection in an "artificial" environment.
