Diagnosis review – mesmerising drama takes double standards to extremes

Finborough theatre, London
A woman with cerebral palsy is interrogated in a hostile future environment in Athena Stevens’ powerful work about society’s unattainable expectations

Activist and playwright Athena Stevens’ latest play, in which she also stars, is an eerie and powerful work. Like much of her writing, Diagnosis explores the double sense of reality experienced by many people living with a disability – the gulf between the life they might lead and the one society expects and imposes on them. This dual sense of reality is taken to extremes during one pulsating night in a police station. After seeing strange messages light up above people’s heads, a woman who uses a wheelchair (Stevens) grows convinced a deadly flood is set to engulf central London. But will anyone listen?

The play is set some time in the future, when a series of supposed protections have been put in place for society’s most vulnerable citizens but have only made things worse. It’s a time when an AI computer program will read you your rights, yet when recited in a robotic voice, these rights only feel all the more unattainable. It’s a time when a witness statement will be filmed for extra security, but the video keeps warping so that the woman in question, rather than being faithfully recorded, is endlessly distorted and obscured.