LUCY PREBBLE’S The Effect was a big hit at the National nine years ago. It is back there now in a strong revival by Jamie Lloyd in a radically reconfigured Lyttelton. Seeing it a second time, I was struck by its intellectual power and its relation to other plays that question modern medical practice. As do Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange and Harold Pinter’s The Hothouse, which Mr Lloyd once directed, it asks how much faith we should place in doctors and institutions that treat patients as human guinea pigs.
Miss Prebble’s set-up is clear. Tristan, who hails from Hackney ‘before it fell’, and Connie, a psychology student from Canada, agree to
