In the Finborough Theatre’s intimate upstairs space, audience members arrive to find a camera aimed directly at them – a mirror turned inward, soon flipped outward to reveal the sterile green interior of a police interrogation room. This is the framing of Diagnosis, a new procedural drama.,
It’s a timely issue: in 2023, the UK’s national policing guidelines were revised to place greater emphasis on accessibility and safeguarding vulnerable individuals, especially those with disabilities, neurodivergent conditions or communication differences. Under Code C of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, a ‘vulnerable person’ is defined as someone who may have difficulty understanding or communicating effectively during detention and questioning – a designation designed to protect, though not always successfully.
So begins Diagnosis: with a vulnerable woman, soaked and screaming, wheeled into an interrogation room. Her entry, mid-outburst, with the desperate cry “You have to listen to me!” becomes the play’s refrain and its emotional thesis.
That woman is played with intense, unwavering focus by Anthea Stevens. Her character – a vulnerable woman with a disability – is being questioned for a bar assault. She’s accompanied by a rookie officer (Ted Walliker), your stereotypical Probationary Constable, who later bursts in over the radio with offhanded remarks or misguided procedural tidbits, adding well-placed levity to the otherwise high-stakes interrogation.
Presiding over the questioning is Officer Terry (played with brittle world-weariness by Walker himself). He begins by reading the woman her rights – a dreary list: supervising panel in attendance, AI transcription activated. It’s not quite enough of a hook for the play’s opening. Walker is further tripped up by an overhead voice that intermittently echoes his lines (and later, the woman’s) – a gesture toward accountability, though its mistiming often proves more distracting than effective.
Juliette Demoulin’s set is sparse but effective: harsh lighting (designed by Mark Dymock) drenches the room in red and shadow, while video projections disorient and magnify – faces are split, duplicated, reflected back at us. These elements build an atmosphere of claustrophobic dread.
When the interrogation starts, it’s a frustrating situation for both parties. Officer Terry, for his part, doesn’t seem a bad man. He’s tired, burdened by bureaucratic constraints and wants to get home in time to tuck in his daughter. Still, he’s committed to protocol. After much back-and-forth, the woman – thanks to said protocol – finally gets to recount her story.
After years of piloting surveillance drones through London’s underground, she begins to see glowing words above people’s heads – foretelling their future injuries and medical diagnoses. This pivot into speculative fiction is an intriguing narrative turn. It offers a dual lens: one in which her story is implausible and easily dismissed, and another – more grounded – about a bar encounter and her own trauma. Either way, she is cast off as delusional.
These monologues, though conceptually strong, flatten the momentum. Stevens delivers them with eerie conviction, but they lack the rhythm that the dialogue-driven scenes achieve. A jolt comes when the woman eventually descends into a primal rage, collapsing on the floor and shouting once more: “Listen to me!” Walker’s direction shines here, staging both characters on the ground – a subtle visual leveling.
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The climax is a satisfying one, with the play’s disparate elements coalescing in its final moments. Diagnosis may not always be entertaining in a traditional sense, but it leaves a lingering impression. It is, above all, a play that prioritises provocation – one that asks, again and again, if anyone is really listening.
Diagnosis by Athena Stevens
Finborough Theatre
Director: Ché Walker
Designer: Juliette Demoulin
Lighting Designer: Mark Dymock
Composer and Sound Designer: Julian Starr
Associate Director: Jillian Feuerstein
Cast: Athena Stevens, Ché Walker, Ted Wailliker
Diagnosis will be performed until 7 June 2025.
