Play: Diagnosis
Today, I was thinking of heading to The Marching Band at last, which by now is showing in the Cine Lumiere. But lo, then Up in the Cheap Seats advertised Diagnosis, at the Finborough Theatre, which sounded interesting enough that I changed my plans and went with them instead. Cheaper tickets available from seat fillers, mind you. And it turned out there's now an Indian restaurant, Yogi's, downstairs - so I booked to eat there, and the group arranged to meet down there too.
Strangely, I got a message from Yogi's today, to the effect that my booking had now been changed to one for two people..? I arrived five minutes late, and corrected the matter. Was seated immediately - and left waiting a very long time for food, perhaps because I didn't have a starter. I had the butter chicken - which I love - steamed rice, and a garlic naan, there being no peshwari. No glasses of wine on the menu either, only prices for bottles - but they were happy enough to provide a glass when I asked.
The chicken was beautiful, and the rice went well with it. Sadly, the naan wasn't - burnt and crispy isn't how I like it, and neither did it have much of a flavour. But service is polite - if slow - and the decor is lovely, although I didn't take a photo. So, you know, I can recommend it with caveats. Anyway, when the others arrived, they clustered around the table, and when I'd finished, and the organiser, who had a drink, and I had paid, we went upstairs to the theatre.
Unassigned seating, and fairly full - a couple of us ended up in the front row. And it's a really intense production to be so close. A woman - Athena Stevens, who is also the playwright - in a wheelchair (she has cerebral palsy) is brought into a police station for questioning after she assaults a man in a bar. However, the story takes a strange twist when she claims to be able to see people's destined illnesses, or injuries, as well as the time until they occur, displayed over their heads, somewhat like an LCD screen.
The staging is excellent; a camera being set up as the audience arrives is unexpectedly trained on them, and left there for an uncomfortable period of time, being turned on her when the play starts. And for her, it must be a draining performance, physical as it is. Now, in the time in which this is set, the law stipulates that "vulnerable" people being questioned must be recorded, with a transcript - the transcript is obviously autogenerated, and displayed on a screen to the side.
Honestly, I think we all found it very hard to understand - most of what she says is quite unclear, and the transcript, of about the standard of autogenerated subtitles on YouTube, is woeful.. although I did get a couple of clues from it, to be honest. Still, without having read the synopsis beforehand, I wouldn't have had a clue what was going on - which is a shame. Because there are two stories here - there's quite an interesting SciFi story, about which I could hardly understand a word of what she was saying, and there's a story about disadvantage resulting from disability. Which was clearer - and while the lack of comprehension might have been making a point about that, I don't think it does the play any favours when the audience hasn't a clue what is going on.
Overall, an intense production, with its short runtime, but rather a frustrating one. Runs till the 7th, if you're curious. We were still talking about it when the cast came out, afterwards, she wearing a t-shirt that said "Don't mess with writers. We'll describe you." Indeed..
Comments
Post a Comment