FringeReview UK 2025
Athena Stevens Diagnosis
Sarah Lawrie for Aegis Productions in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre, Associate Producer Jillian Feuerstein
Genre: Drama, Feminist Theatre, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Finborough Theatre
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
There’s loaded prejudice and prophesy in the title’s word. Athena Stevens’ Diagnosis, which she stars in, comes to the Finborough directed by another of the play’s actors, Ché Walker, till 7th June.
Over 50 minutes, a compelling, unique and disturbing vision unravels: prophesying prophesy is invisible. That’s why as many as possible should see it.
Review
“She’s a live one.” How can Cassandra be believed, hauled into a Police Interview room and pronounced drunk from Villiers Street on May 16th 2035? Especially when disabled, in a wheelchair and described as “impaired”. In other words more invisible than now, as all disabled people tend to be when not given soft fundraising TV spots. The world’s darker, hotter, more disablist, as you might expect ten years down the disturbing rail tracks of dystopias. There’s loaded prejudice and prophesy in the title’s word. Athena Stevens’ Diagnosis, which she stars in, comes to the Finborough directed by another of the play’s actors, Ché Walker, till 5th June.
Walker also featured here in his own superb three-hander play, Burnt Up Love, back in November, one of Finborough’s 2024 highlights. Here, he’s the exasperated Officer who takes over from Ted Walliker (also known here as producer) as the Rookie police officer who brings in the unnamed She (Athena Stevens).
Walliker’s awkwardly offstage and on-voice for nearly all the action, for good reason, as the world morphs from two rare foxes to assuage police boredom into something the arrested woman is telling them. It’s not often foxes play canaries (and the scarcity suggests this too), but minutes later, their wild barks are anything but mating-cries. There’s dark touches of humour everywhere, but they turn and bite.
Juliette Demoulin’s superbly pared-down greyish set lends more claustrophobia. It’s interrupted with one orange-lit grill and a chair. Strikinfly it also occludes some of the already diminutive Finborough space. It’s all lent emphasis in that relentless police-style with Mark Dymock’s lighting. Julian Starr’s soundscape provides echo and spaciousness. It works on noises off though the echo effect occludes a little of the conversation.
There’s fourth-wall gestures. In a near future, a curious degrading of democracy rules. It’s where a Citizen Supervisory Panel of the public (the audience) are recruited and compelled to be privy to all questionings (even at 3.48am when this interview starts), which promotes transparency but also voyeurism and spectacle, not explicitly explored but hovering over the consciousness of the play. It’s economically suggested, but the focus is on the essential two-hander with noises-off interrupting.
The surveillance element is heightened with a fourth cast member on stage. Lev Govoreski operates his video, a video design co-created with Rio Redwood-Swayer, which casts the players on the upstage wall and crafts a mirror recessional effect. There’s other curious features: another small screen where the text, unreadable from where I sat (and for most people) scrolled up with a 15-seconds delay. There are moments when perhaps less might be more: mostly the tech was undistracting, and enacted its menace.
She is someone whose job is to sit at home as a Drone Operator and send drones through the underground to check for structural damage. Part of this under Villiers Street runs next to the Thames towards the Embankment. It’s not just that She can spot obvious flaws, she somehow predicts them: she also sees dates and impending accidents flutter over people’s heads: like life-changing injuries.
Indeed one of those personal apercus has caused all the trouble. She has gone to a club, received almost friendly attention from a man which alters. He’s engaged in an already long flirtation with another woman that causes She to throw a punch that, caught on video, impresses the police. But that’s the start. She’s noted an impending danger more important than the safety of just one woman. And that’s why She is here. She was never drunk. She wanted to be arrested, in front of the police, in front of an invisible two-way mirror (invoked at the start) so many others might see it too. But with the Rookie out on Villiers Street, with foxes for company, all’s quiet. She exhorts Officer to leave transmission on. Things will change.
Walker’s avuncular, exasperated but not entirely unsympathetic Office interacts in a roller-coaster of flickering empathy and sudden flickers of procedural ge-out, including sending she home in . taxi. She though, burning through her witness, is having none of this. Stevens compels attention first to last, and Walker’s looming stage presence, which can easily dominate, fines down as he knows where to duet with affect and nuance as director and actor. A rare empathic moment is all the more touching: when She rises, then sits on the floor and Walker joins her.
She compresses enormous intensity and witness. Walker and she bond in a taut, dystopia-compressed huddle of wits and belief, disbelief and alienation. The arc’s not simple, politics are more intrusive and coercion is heightened even more than the increasingly coercive present; from which such drama as here extrapolates diminishing freedoms. Two powerful writers double as actor-directors to craft warnings way beyond the one she has arrived to give.
Over 50 minutes, a compelling, unique and disturbing vision unravels: prophesying prophesy is invisible. That’s why as many as possible should see it.
