The Effect

About

Written by British playwright Lucy Prebble, The Effect is often described as a "clinical romance," which delves into the lives of two human subjects of pharmaceutical trials. These two subjects, Tristan and Connie begin to fall in love as the drug trial progresses. However, they being to wonder if their growing love is a natural phenomenon or merely a side-effect of the experiment. Added to this are the conversations between the two doctors running the trials. They argue if the current epidemic of depression cans simply be attributed to a chemical imbalance in the brain or if depression is due to only external factors. The play is an interesting investigation of love, neurology and opens the door to larger questions of the state of humans in the modern world.