Review: SCROUNGER by Athena Stevens at Finborough Theatre 7 January-1 February 2020

‘Scrounger refuses to pander to the audience and will leave them questioning themselves afterwards. It also has some great moments of humour and two cracking performances.’ ★★★★

At one point Scrounger, played by Athena Stevens (who also wrote the play), declares that the role of a storyteller is supposed to be to ‘break this down into a straight trajectory’. But her story isn’t like this. Stories in real life often aren’t.

Based on Stevens’ experiences of her disgraceful treatment by an airline, who forcibly removed her from a flight because they said they could not accommodate her wheelchair (yet they had been warned in advance). In removing the wheelchair, worth £30,000, they cause irrevocable damage to that too.

The plot of Scrounger is ostensibly following the case from the beginning to its ultimate conclusion. But Stevens, who was born with athetoid cerebral palsy, is having none of it. In the opening of the play the fourth wall is well and truly smashed with Stevens berating the audience, complacent in its liberal values, about their experience of seeing the play and guesses what they will say afterwards. This has an added frisson on press night. 

 

While Stevens narrates much of the action, another actor, the equally excellent Leigh Quinn, plays a multitude of roles. Her dizzying range of accents and personas help to convey the story and keep the narrative moving. Equally, Anna Reid’s deceptively simplistic design enables the audience to keep track of the different characters and settings. 

But this is Stevens’ show. Whilst the obvious targets are criticised – the airline, the airport, the government – the main target of Stevens’ ire are the people around her, who are seen as complicit with the bureaucratic forces she is fighting. This extends to the audience. Goodwill alone is not enough, the important thing is to take a stand. But who present is going to do that?    

Scrounger is at times an uncomfortable watch. This is deliberate, Stevens is scathing about how civil rights and campaigning stories are often condensed in films into a two hour narrative with a triumphant conclusion. Indeed, the resolution of her own case is only mentioned briefly at the end, because by that point too much else has happened, including her being stuck in her flat for nearly three months. 

Scrounger’s style is at times in the vein of 1970s agitprop theatre. It refuses to pander to the audience and will leave them questioning themselves afterwards. It also has some great moments of humour and two cracking performances.    

Photography credit: Nick Rutter

SCROUNGER 

Written by Athena Stevens 

Directed by Lily McLeish 

Produced by Sarah Lawrie for Aegis Productions in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre 

Finborough Theatre        

Dates: 7 January-1 February 2020

Box office: https://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/productions/2020/scrounger.php

 

Reviewer Andrew Curtis is a playwright who regularly has plays performed in London fringe theatre. He graduated from three cohorts of the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers Programme. 

@AndrewCurtis4