By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2 RUNTIME: 100 minutes (no interval)

WHEN?: 5 August, opens 9 August and runs through 7 October 2023

Clinical psychiatrists Dr Lorna James and Dr Toby Sealey are setting up a trial to discover whether they have found a ‘Viagra for the heart’.

• Read on for reasons including how Essiedu is 1 of this country’s finest young actors and Russell is making her debut

Trial subjects Tristan and Connie wonder whether they are really falling in love or whether the dopamine hits they are enjoying are actually the titular effect of the pills they are popping.

Author Lucy Prebble (writer for acclaimed TV Succession and I Hate Suzie as well as Olivier Award-nominated for A Very Expensive Poison at the Old Vic) explores depression and its treatment in a humourous and involving way that leaves a lasting impression.

Director Jamie Lloyd (Betrayal, Harold Pinter Theatre) transforms the National’s Lyteltton Theatre which was previously 1 of the dullest and most cavernous venues to see a show in London.

Instead we have a stage in the middle of the venue (think The Maids at Trafalgar Studios) with a floor that lights up and an impressive illumination array that can at once transform it into something ultimately nightmareish with blasts of smoke on hand to make it truly disorientating.

Paapa Essiedu (A Number, Old Vic) is 1 of this country’s finest young actors and plays Tristan, whose gap year has become a gap life, and for whom his enthusiasm for participating in clinical trials has perhaps become a little too much.

Taylor Russell plays Connie and, during her professional stage debut, brings an extraordinary raw honesty to her role as the young student with an older lover who becomes desperate to know whether she is actually on the drug or taking a placebo.

We loved the couple’s dancing as their barriers lowered and their lack of inhibitions meant they could be truly honest with each other – or were they? – about their motivations and aspirations. The lines were whipcrack-smart and we particularly enjoyed Connie’s: ‘Don’t write a sonnet about it’ response to some particularly invasive questioning.

The writing is strong and soon we learn that the supervising doctors played by Michele Austin (so good in everything she does but particularly Lloyd’s flawed Cyrano De Bergerac, Harold Pinter Theatre) and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith have history which is affecting their work and their judgement of the trial.

Lloyd’s productions often rely on perfect sound and here the tight microphones mean we are even privy to the most intimate of exchanges.

For us the most interesting element of the play was that 1 of the doctors refused the medication that may have alleviated their problem but we felt the work’s exploration of its themes could have been deeper and less superficial.

• Main picture by Marc Brenner via Facebook courtesy National Theatre Tickets
• Have you seen a show starring Paapa Essiedu, directed by Jamie Lloyd or at National Theatre? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
• Enjoyed this review? Follow monstagigz on Twitter @monstagigz, email neildurham3@gmail.com and check us out on Instagram and Facebook