The National Theatre warns the play contains strong language and adult themes including references to depression, anxiety and suicide.
Lucy Prebble’s award-winning clinical play about love and mental health premiered in 2012 in the intimate Dorfman Theatre. To accommodate its revival, the much larger Lyttleton has been totally reconstructed and turned into a traverse stage and is totally unrecognisable.
The actors perform on a bare platform divided into white squares and triangles which are sharply lit from underneath. The audience, divided into two, sits either side of the platform, facing each other.
Two young people, Tristan and Connie, participating in a drug trial for anti-depressants, fall in love. Are they really in love or is it the side effects of the drugs? Are they being emotionally manipulated?
Tristan is a streetwise boy from Hackney, who is doing the trial purely for the money. Connie a Canadian Nigerian psychology student. She is doing the trial as part of her studies. He has a cocky personality. She is more muted. They try out a variety of sexual positions. (The National employs an Intimacy Coordinator to make certain the actors are comfortable.)
Tristan and Connie are observed by two doctors, who sit at either end of the platform. Should the experiment be continued? The doctors are psychologically opposed. Is what they are doing to the couple ethically right?
Paapa Essiedu and Taylor Russell (film star of Bones and All, making her stage debut) are Tristan and Connie. Michele Austin and Obna Holdbrook-Smith are the doctors. The acting is assured and Jamie Lloyd directs with flair.
Lucy Prebble’s play has attracted an enthusiastic young audience. Many of them, embarrassed by the explicit eroticism, laughed immaturely.
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