If there were a side effects disclosure for Shaker Bridge Theatre‘s production of The Effect, it would warn viewers they might experience little blasts of dopamine from seeing something bold, funny, intimate, smart and energetic. It might also caution that Lucy Prebble’s 2012 play about a clinical drug trial has no right to churn up so much emotion while limiting its story to elemental statements about love, depression and the brain. To see the play is to puzzle out how it works and to slip into its vortex.
The setting is a clinic, and the set, from designer Craig Mowery, is a low, white circle that glows brightly when the light strikes it just so. It’s a ring around the two subjects of an experiment, but it’s far too slight to confine them. If anything gets out of control — and the ring warns you that it will — emotions will break free.
The play rises above its clever premise to intrigue viewers by exposing the core of human emotion.
The situation supplies all the conflict. Two subjects of a drug trial meet, banter, develop an attraction and fall in love. Each milestone matches a dosage increase, testing human tolerance for a new pharmaceutical designed to alter brain chemistry. The drug could be responsible for one subject’s hand tremors and giddiness. Or are those a side effect of love? What’s behind the vivid interactions between two subjects under a doctor’s observation? True love or tweaked neurotransmitters?
In a powerfully focused production, the play rises above its clever premise to intrigue viewers by exposing the core of human emotion. The Effect is a play of ideas but not a lecture. The concepts it explores all become events that spark both emotional reactions from the characters and the chance for engaged reflection from the audience.
These trial volunteers are paid to spend four weeks in a clinic while doctors monitor their responses to a new antidepressant. Tristan, who regularly does trials for extra money, is a flirty, restless sensation seeker who bounces like a rubber ball. Connie is a thoughtful psychology student, skilled at impulse control and curious about pharmacology. Tristan acts on instinct while Connie is cerebral, making their early interactions a comic clash of behavior styles.
Lorna, the psychologist administering the trial, seems at first to be a spoilsport who tries to keep the kids from cutting up while logging their heart rates. But Prebble has built a neatly structured four-hander, and Lorna is being supervised herself, by the pharma company’s psychiatrist, Toby. Tristan and Connie have just met, but Lorna and Toby have a long history; all four will be changed by the trial.
The play’s bright wit comes from the characters’ sharp perceptions. Essentially, emotion itself is the subject of the story. With characters overwhelmed by their feelings, the performers can employ enormous range. In this production they demonstrate it impressively, conveying the exuberance of love and the desolation of depression with power and nuance.
Director Bill Coons has chiseled the production down to a theatrical essence, eliminating props and relying on light, space and movement to intensify the work of the actors. Wearing identical spotless white clothes, the trial participants spend much of their time on the floor within the set’s stylized ring. The characters express themselves in actions, and no one can hide for long behind words.
The play unfolds without an intermission. Coons sets a vigorous pace while giving viewers time to collect their thoughts; to observe, in effect, alongside the doctors. By contrast, the ending is rushed, and the play doesn’t carry the audience neatly to its final equilibrium. In the closing moments, Prebble uses repetition to show the passage of time, but Coons smooths out its impact.
Susan Haefner, as Lorna, checks in on the trial subjects with expressionless eyes. Lorna’s tight lips never soften as Connie and Tristan test her authority. But her stiff, scientific attitude is a thin layer above a deep past. Haefner is masterfully subtle at revealing Lorna’s depression, demonstrating its agony in a wrenching scene.
Tim Rush plays Toby, a doctor confident enough to joke about the brain while balancing a model of one in his palm. He delivers a complex monologue with potent dramatic clarity and appears unburdened by introspection until memories test his capacity for regret.
The dynamic interactions between the trial subjects are soaked in unpredictability, conveying the radical power of a brand-new experience — exactly like the beginning of love. Haulston Mann plays Tristan as drawing on a bottomless reserve of charm, only to discover he wants to be dizzier than love ever made him before. As Connie, Sophia Grasso shows the character straining for balance before each new leap — she thinks before she acts but plunges anyway. The two actors work together with the daring of trapeze artists.
Shaker Bridge’s production is polished. Sound effects heighten a sense of emotional danger, and the lighting is a clever mix of clinical neutrals spiked with outbursts of molten color or sharp shadows.
Defending his feelings, Tristan says, “I can tell the difference between who I am and a side effect.” Connie isn’t so sure. As Lorna grows concerned that a pell-mell romance may invalidate the trial, Toby observes her bias and is quick to reject any suggestion the drug isn’t delivering exactly what it was designed to do. Four people see what they want to see. In all cases, brain and body are responding to something, and each character wants the reason for the response to fit their beliefs.
The audience can search along with them for the fuzzy line between the truth of a self and the facts of a purely chemical reaction. We all want feelings to mean something, especially when they get as big as these. Like the doctors, we study two people like specimens and ask that immense question: Is this real love? Can I trust what I feel?
The original print version of this article was headlined “Romantic Chemistry | Theater review: The Effect, Shaker Bridge Theatre”
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2025.
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