Lucy Prebble’s The Effect coming to Auckland

A sizzling chemistry lesson from Succession writer, Lucy Prebble, on whether love sits in the heart or in the brain comes to ASB Theatre next week, courtesy of Auckland Theatre Company.
Lucy Prebble, The Effect (promotional still). Courtesy of Auckland Theatre Company

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There's no such thing as side effects. They're just effects you can't sell.

Fresh from a critically acclaimed season at London’s National Theatre, Lucy Prebble’s The Effect will see it’s Aotearoa debut next week, as the third instalment in Auckland Theatre Company’s 2024 Season. 

Psychology student Connie and  Tristan are participants in a clinical trial for an experimental anti-depressant. Strangers when they enter the trial, they quickly discover an electric chemistry and begin to fall for one another. But the question lingers: could it just be the drugs?

Unfolding within a sterile medical setting and carefully surveilled by the trial doctors, Prebble’s story is that of love in the time of Big Pharma and the attention economy, where everyone’s in therapy, medicated or dosing on dating-app dopamine. Still, it takes on the age-old, Austenian enigma of human attraction and all great romances—head or heart? 

The Effect premiers on Tuesday, 16 April and closes Saturday, 11 May

Bookings are available now via the ATC website.

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