The Effect (Key Conspirators), at Theatre Works

What does it feel like to be in chemically induced love? And what does it feel like to be depressed?

British playwright Lucy Prebble, a writer on the acclaimed TV drama Succession, interrogates that in a study of love and neuroscience.

The play premiered at the National Theatre in London in 2012 and won the (British) Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play, before opening off Broadway in 2016.

Photos by Steven Mitchell Wright

Psychology student Connie (Jessica Martin) and fellow volunteer Tristan (Damon Baudin) have signed up for a drug trial that will last several weeks.

Neither of them is depressed, but the trial is to test the impact of increasingly strong doses of an antidepressant.

As is typical for such a study, it is not known who is being given the drug and who a placebo.

The pair has signed on purely for the money. 

Both are young adults.

Connie, from country NSW, has an older boyfriend who is in his 40s and has a child from a previous relationship.

Melburnian Tristan is footloose and fancy free. He looks forward to travelling.

At first, Connie is more conservative and doesn’t appear keen to open up to Tristan, but it is soon clear that they develop strong feelings for one another.

Are these feelings real or chemically induced? That becomes the big question.

Another is the state of mind and standing of the clinician overseeing the trial, resident psychiatrist Dr Lorna James (Emma Choy).

She has experienced depression and has a history with her superior, driven pharmacologist and psychiatrist Dr Toby Sealey (Phillip Hayden).

His father was a heart surgeon, but he focuses on the brain. 

The medical and ethical aspects of the trial are brought into the spotlight.

Also, bear in mind that one of the strict rules of the study is that for the length of it, participants are not allowed to have sex.

Before this is over, the limits, setbacks and drawbacks of the study will be tested and, with it, interpersonal relationships.

I found myself invested in the finely orchestrated, performed and staged production from the get go.

I was willing the relationship that develops between the two “guinea pigs” to work out and go the distance outside the trial.

Alarm bells and surprises are part of the set-up of The Effect, which is all the better for them. Plaudits to writer Lucy Prebble.

I greatly appreciated the authenticity that the four actors bring to their respective roles.

Jessica Martin channels vulnerability as Connie. She readily displays her character’s conflicted mind, as Connie doesn’t know whether to trust her heart or her head. 

Damon Baudin is accomplished at wearing Tristan’s heart on his sleeve. Tristan is restless, spontaneous and emotional.

There is an intensity to and sadness about Emma Choy’s portrayal of Dr Lorna James. Let’s not mince words, the doctor is facing a crisis.

Confidence, cockiness and ambitiousness are the keys to Phillip Hayden’s representation of overseer Dr Toby Sealey. The latter is a puppet master – a manipulator.

The dramatic music stings from sound designer Jack Burmeister and stark lighting cues from set, lighting and costume designer Tom Vulcan are hugely impactful. In short, they work a treat.

So, too, the two-tiered staging – at first, white and clinical, then giving way to the blackest of blacks.

Ninety minutes without interval, director Alonso Pineda has forged a compelling piece that raises many questions about the purity of medical trials.

Don’t look for a neat, happily ever after story, rather a succession of spikes and troughs, challenges and burdens, as The Effect hits hard.

It is time to get excited about this emotionally wrought roller coaster that continues to work away at your psyche.

It is on at Theatre Works until 18^th April, 2026.