A shrewd examination of the dehumanization of vulnerable people set in a dystopian London
Placed in a dystopian near future London, Diagnosis is premised on authority’s ability, or rather inability, to comprehend information from an unusual source. Ostensibly a two-hander, this play presents the nameless “She”, performed by the play’s writer Athena Stevens, and “Officer”, played by director Ché Walker. A small off-screen role of the disembodied voice of a “rookie” cop is played by Ted Walliker.
Set in a bleak Charing Cross Police Station room, Juliette Demoulin’s naturalistic greyscale set leads us to believe this version of London is at least adjacent to the current. The only thing realistic about the police procedure however is the fact this police station hasn’t been refurbished in 50 years. It looked eerily similar to the set for An Interrogation at the Hampstead Theatre earlier this year, complete with video footage of proceedings live-streamed on the back wall. Stevens’ character is called in for questioning by the Officer for a variety of puzzling reasons. Firstly, it appears she has punched a man in a club to prevent what she sees as a sexual assault about to happen. This stems from the second plot point, in which Stevens explains she has a supernatural power of premonition whereby she can see people’s trauma conditions appear above their heads with a countdown. One such visual hallucination is the cause for this girl in a club- hers says “Complex PTSD- 17 minutes”. Finally, through Stevens’ character’s job as a TfL drone operator, she notices a crack in the tunnel near Embankment, and Villiers Street will soon be flooded. In her frustration at not being listened to for being a vulnerable person, she seeks solace in a nitrous bar, which is where she sees the aforementioned couple in trouble.
Stevens uses terminology to effectively portray the sense of alienation through anonymity: The officer constantly refers to her as “subject”; “sector 4” is used to refer to what is essentially Covent Garden. Unfortunately I couldn’t understand what her status in the station actually was. Was she a suspect of an assault? Is she under arrest- where is her legal representative and appropriate adult and intermediary? Is she a member of the public offering intelligence to prevent a catastrophe? Again, why is there no intermediary- this is something commonplace in modern evidence gathering with vulnerable people. Why has this been removed in the future? It appears to have replaced by some impenetrable “PO-22” document and the public- us- observing in the shadows for misconduct. Why is she being interviewed by a lone Detective Chief Inspector who is the sole line manager of one uniformed constable?
Aside from the procedural confusion, another problem here is the element of her premonition power. It is never established that the supernatural is an accepted part of the show’s world-building. Therefore it is difficult to know why authorities would take it seriously unless it already was something believable in the context of this alternate reality.
Given the short run time, I would perhaps lose the supernatural element and focus on her character’s personal life- particularly the interaction in the club where she explains how she flirts with the man, only to realise she has interrupted something more sinister, but is nevertheless made to feel invisible as usual. The show needs to understand police procedure more if it is to be represented as realistic or even dystopian; otherwise it needs to establish the supernatural context that will allow audiences to suspend belief enough to consider what she actually wants people to invest in as a conceit. The show left me as frustrated and confused as her character, which, rather ironically, is probably the point.