40 of the greatest plays ever written The Effect (2012), Lucy Prebble

Lucy Prebble made her name with ENRON, charting the hubris of the financial giant, but while it may be less flashy, The Effect is still dazzlingly good. It has, at its heart, a question we’d all like to know the answer to: what is love? The play follows two volunteers in a clinical trial for a new anti-depressant; when they fall for each other, they wonder whether their love is “real”, or a by-product. And given all interactions in the brain are just chemical, does it even matter? The idea of what’s really real and what’s really romantic, what happiness is and what function unhappiness might have, are turned over by Prebble’s own very sharp mind. Her characters are fun to spend time with, her dialogue is snappy, but she digs deep too, into both scientific theories and human emotions, taking us from the grey lows of depression to the technicolour highs of new love. HW

Geraint Lewis