A play about treating depression and medical ethics, The Effect reunites Zoë Robins with acting mentor Sara Wiseman in a production that marks both women’s return to the New Zealand stage after major screen roles overseas.
A young man and woman stand face to face, staring intently into each other’s eyes. Emotions are running sky high, but they have only just met. Connie and Tristan, paid volunteers in a clinical trial for a new anti-depression drug, seem to have fallen madly in love.
It might be love. Or it could be a side effect of the drug, which is firing a chemical replication of dopamine, the brain’s “happy hormone”, through their nervous system. Their passion may be a chemical romance, with a hangover on the horizon.
One way to find out is to step up the dosage and see what happens. However, Dr Lorna James, a psychiatrist observing the trial, becomes increasingly concerned by the volunteers’ behaviour. Her supervisor, Dr Toby Sealey, a psychiatrist working for the drug company, wants to press on because there’s money in the game.
This is the scenario of English playwright Lucy Prebble’s drama, The Effect, being staged by the Auckland Theatre Company from April 16.
The play’s central debate spins around the diverging methods – and ethics – of treating depression. Dr James believes the condition is caused by external factors, like life itself, and supports therapies such as counselling. Dr Sealey favours neuroscientific interventions using drugs. Sometimes, both approaches have to intersect.
The ATC team, directed by Benjamin Kilby-Henson, goes full-blast for this production. Sara Wiseman and Jarod Rawiri play the doctors, while Zoë Robins and Jayden Daniels are the young guinea pigs. Connie is a clever, poised student; Tristan is wild and volatile.
The play’s intensifying ambience is created by designers Dan Williams and Jane Hakaraia, with a soundscape by Los Angeles-based New Zealand singer-songwriter Chelsea Jade, aka Watercolours.
Wiseman is a respected veteran of New Zealand and Australian stage and screen who divides her time between both countries but has called Sydney home since 2011. She is in demand on both sides of the Tasman. One of her most prominent roles in Australia was playing Carolyn Bligh, a lead in all six seasons of the period drama A Place to Call Home, which ran from 2013-18.
She appeared in three seasons of Rake, the sly comedy-drama hit starring Richard Roxburgh as a dodgy Sydney barrister.
Wiseman’s latest Australian TV role is in High Country, a new missing-person crime series due here next month. She plays Helen Hartley, partner to Andie, a tough detective played by Leah Purcell, the terrifying bikie protector from the Wentworth prison drama series.
Wiseman had to undergo a “chemistry test” with Purcell to check their characters’ queer compatibility, she told the West Australian newspaper. “Because I swing a bit queer [Wiseman came out as bisexual in 2021], it was nice to be able to explore that from an authentic sense and feel comfortable in my own skin and do the role justice,” she told the paper.
In New Zealand, she has worked steadily in series such as Under the Vines, My Life Is Murder, Shortland Street (three times) and The Gulf.
Last year, she joined the core cast in the upcoming Disney movie Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which was filmed in Sydney. She can only disclose, “I am an ape and a female.” Wiseman was asked to audition for the film but initially turned it down because, as she puts it, “I’m not wa-ha-ha, hoot’n’holler, oh no no no.
“Then my dear friend Rebecca Gibney was saying she’s got this audition and I was like, ‘Yeah no, I turned that down.’ And she said, ‘Oh? Why? Not many people have been asked. You’re just scared, Sas. You’re scared of it because it’s very revealing to be an ape.’
“So, I did the audition and crazily got a call saying I had got the role. It was the best experience, utterly glorious. We did seven weeks of ape-camp training, and your body, vocal and emotions are all primal.”
However, she won’t be attending the premiere in Los Angeles when it opens in May. She’ll be on the ATC stage playing Lorna, the first time she has worked for the company since a Ladies Night production 20 years ago.
Some of her mates think she’s mad to return to the theatre. “They say, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re doing theatre, it’s terrifying.’ Good actor mates say, ‘No. Wouldn’t go back to stage, it’s too scary.’
“But with plays like this, you get to deep-dive into a really good-quality script and a character that you don’t often get the chance to with screen … In theatre, when you experience the exchange with an audience, there’s no replacing that storytelling.”
Lucy Prebble has impeccable credentials as a storyteller, often using meaty real-life dramas as inspiration. Along with The Effect, she has written the plays Enron, about the Texan energy giant’s fraud scandal, and A Very Expensive Poison, based on journalist Luke Harding’s account of the 2006 death in London of Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko.
Prebble and her friend, actor Billie Piper, collaborated on the boundary-pushing TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl and I Hate Suzie. Then, in 2017, she joined the writing team on Succession, a move she initially thought was a “step back” because she had no control over the material.
The Effect debuted in 2012 in a highly praised production for London’s National Theatre starring Piper as Connie. Last year, Prebble “reupholstered” the script, which was also performed at the National Theatre. This is the version produced by the ATC.
“Lucy Prebble has said that when she first wrote the play, she was 31 and fully identified with the ‘young love, rose-tinted, it’s all go’,” says Wiseman. “When she revisited it, she says she now relates to the doctors where they’ve had some trauma and grievances, which have given them scars, and how relatable she feels they are to her now.
“I think if you get to midlife, and you don’t have any trauma and scars, you are either hiding things or doing extraordinarily well.”
The preparations for working on The Effect have sparked a lot of discussion about the links between psychiatry and the drug industry.
“I spoke with a dear friend who is a psychiatrist,” she says. “It was fascinating hearing him talk about his patients. He wants them to move on and leave. He doesn’t want them to become dependent on medication or on him.
“I guess it depends on the ethics of the psychiatrist and the kick-back. There are some charlatans out there, as you’ve seen on shows like Dopesick and Painkiller, which are very US-oriented.”
She identifies with Lorna’s view that depressed people have a more accurate view of the world. “Yes! Can I shout this line? We are living in a slowly boiling pot, aren’t we? And we’ve all been told to look in the other direction or scroll on social media to distract ourselves.
“If anyone takes a really good hard look at what’s happening, it’s overwhelming. No wonder people are medicating.”
Wiseman and Robins, the actors playing doctor and drug volunteer, have a real-life connection. Ten years ago, Robins trained in theatre in Auckland at the Actors’ Program, which was co-founded by Wiseman, who remains active as a tutor and board member.
“I was in the third year of the Actors’ Program in 2013, and Sara was a mentor and tutor,” says Robins. “So, I have worked with her in the teacher-student dynamic, and this is the first time we have worked together as peers, which is very cool.
“I also met Ben then, too, our director. He directed our graduation showcase; it was kind of professional theatre, but still under the warm, comfortable blanket of the school. And that was the last time I worked with either of them.”
Robins’ love of theatre started in school when she was a pupil at Hutt Valley High, under the guidance of her favourite teacher. “I did some high school productions with our amazing teacher, Mr Beckett [Bernard Beckett], and I thank him a lot for sustaining my love of drama.”
Robins got her first job when she was 12, starring in the 2005 TV series The New Tomorrow, a sequel to the iconic The Tribe.
“It was one season of 25 episodes,” she recalls. “That was my first experience of acting with screen.”
Since then, Robins has done a lot of work with “screen” as a rising star in the TV fantasy genre. She worked in the Nickelodeon series Power Rangers: Ninja Steel (2017-18), then stepped up to a higher level in 2019 when she was cast as Nynaeve al’Meara in the Prime Video drama The Wheel of Time, working alongside acting legends Rosamund Pike, Sophie Okonedo and, for a few episodes of series two, Rima Te Wiata. Robins has recently returned from Prague, where season three has just wrapped. It is now in the production process, set for screening (possibly) next year.
Robins, who lives “south of South Auckland” when she’s back home, says she wanted to return to the theatre to expand her skills. “Acting on stage stretches a very different muscle. I feel like my brain is being worked in a way, and my body, which hasn’t happened in years. I could feel a need to work like this for a while, and it feels right with this piece and these people.”
She is intrigued by Connie’s situation. “She’s a psychology student and it’s her term break. I think she has entered the drug trial because she is curious. She is incredibly smart; she has a lot of academics and intellectuals in her life, so her energy sits in her head. She’s aware of drugs and their chemical effects and what they do in the brain. But knowing that doesn’t necessarily change the fact that this is happening, and she is being manipulated.”
As the play proceeds, and the drug buzz kicks in, the theatrical spectacle starts to transform.
“Everything is heightening for them,” says Robins, “their senses, smell, touch, hearing. Their clothes might feel a little different on their bodies, the floor beneath their feet. There is stuff surging when the two look at each other.”
Wheel of Time (WoT) is notable for its dramatic dialogue delivered, according to one of Robins’ WoT buddies, with “lots of screaming and crying”. The Effect’s dialogue requires a different approach, she says, laughing.
“I would not say there is screaming, but there are moments when I definitely have to raise my voice.”
Wiseman says she has learnt a lot about the treatment of depression from working on the play. “It has taught me about how much we can do to retrain or generate the emotions we would like. We can also make peace with knowing what our emotions are in terms of things that can lead to depression and anxiety.
“It is not preaching, it’s not going to give any answers. But there is a scene where I debate with Toby [her supervisor] about when medicine is valid in the short term, when a person is in deep crisis, to save them from doing something drastic.”
Robins explains: “The relationship between Connie and Lorna starts in the first scene in the application process.
“Before Connie enters the drug trial, she sees Dr James as an aspirational figure, a woman of medicine. Connie feels a need to impress, and there’s a level of respect between them.
“I would say Connie goes in thinking like Dr James. Because she is so intelligent, she would have all the arguments about what exactly is happening when the trial starts. But she is being moulded and changed by what she experiences in the drug trial.”
Robins has been part of the team’s discussion about the ethics of drug trials, including in New Zealand.
“We have done some research about trials in New Zealand, Australia and the US, and it is very, very interesting the way certain trials are conducted, and the way there are people attached to the pharmaceutical companies who want the drugs to do well because it’s in their best interests.
“I find the whole conversation about whether the trials are ethical necessary and important. This play has a lot of open questions that may not answer anything, actually.”
The Effect: ASB Waterfront Theatre, Auckland, April 16-May 11. High Country starts on ThreeNow next month. The Wheel of Time is available on Prime Video.