This follow up of the acclaimed Eron from Lucy Prebble centred on two people who met at a drugs trial and whether they fell in love in their own accord or in any way influenced by the drugs they were given. These was nicely structured into a beautiful courtship in the first half of the play and the setting of a drug trial made the two felling in love in only a couple of days believable. It was a beautifully written, acted and produced first half which had great pacing and genuine emotional connection with the audience.
With a somewhat frivolous love story in the first half, there needed something more substantial to give the play more moral and dramatic gravitas. This was where the twist of whether one of them was given a placebo and how it affected the relationship. Then there was a parallel debate on the use of anti-depressant and questioned their effectiveness and if they don’t, whether having a placebo effect count as having an effect. These are all valid debate but it was structured slightly clumsily and seemed like that scene can be taken out without affecting the rest of the play. I have my grip the structure of the second half and I am disappointed that, in some ways, I do not really care much about what happened to the characters in the end.
The cast of four were outstanding with Billie Piper and Jonjo O’Neil as the drug trialists and Tom Goodman-Hill and Anastatia Hille in charge of the drug trial. The production use of projection and an 4 sided audience seating worked well with the set of the different parts of the drug trial compound in the middle. The direction, by Rupert Goold, kept the pace and timing tight and sustain the drama throughout. It was, overall, a great production.
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