Brainsluts is medical slang for people who sign up to clinical drug trials, especially those involving psychoactive substances. Not that this particular batch of four strangers has read the pamphlets. They are going in blind, and that might just be one of the side effects.
The guinea pigs are Mitch, a firebrand anti-work activist; Yaz, twitchy and privileged, hiding her nepotistic tie to the trial’s organisers; Duggan, offbeat and eager for friendship, and free spirited and blissfully eccentric Bathsheba. Over them all presides Dr Eavis, whose mix of nervous humour and private heartbreak makes her scarcely less exposed than the volunteers she supervises.
Over the next five Sundays they will be shut in a room, waiting to see what the pills might do. The reward is financial, the drug is unknown, and the risks - like the participants themselves - remain unpredictable.
With the Wi-Fi unavailable they are forced to put away their mobile phones and swap stories of money worries, privilege, politics, loneliness and side-effects, their guarded small talk sliding into arguments, flirtations, confessions and farcical attemps at meditation.
Several truths emerge as they tentatively bond revealing that their lives have steadfastly refused to fall neatly into place and that their subsequent reliance on the gig economy has left them overstretched, underpaid, treading water and oddly dependent on strangers for solidarity.
Sharply scripted the dialogue crackles with wit, particularly in group scenes where personality clashes and neurotic quirks collide. Monologues and small asides are both funny and revealing, allowing characters’ private thoughts to surface without slowing the pace. It’s nimbly played with keen comic instincts, landing quickfire gags and awkward pauses with equal precision, drawing out contrasts - eccentricity against awkwardness, idealism against cynicism, while keeping a thread of vulnerability running beneath the humour. While the characters lean a little on recognisable “types,” the cast keep them fresh. And the silliness is all warped by the absurd logic of a dissociative hallucinogen (or is it a placebo?).
While the result of all this research isn’t groundbreaking, this witty comedy captures something truthful about survival in uncertain times: that even in the most clinical of environments, laughter and human connection remain stubbornly alive.
Show Times: 30 July – 25 (not 13) August 2025 at 2.45pm.
Tickets: £10 to £13 (£12) and £15 (£14).
Suitability: 14+ (Note - Show contains references to illness, hospitals and mental health).