Supersonic Man – Southwark Playhouse Borough

Picture: Louis Burgess

Supersonic Man continues at Southwark Playhouse Borough, London until 3 May 2025

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

In 2020, Channel 4 aired a documentary, Peter: The Human Cyborg. It followed robotics expert Peter Scott-Morgan who, after being diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, decided to use his knowledge of innovation to develop ways to both prolong his life and maintain its quality in the face of his fatal diagnosis.

Musical writer and director Chris Burgess started developing Supersonic Man to be closely based on Scott-Morgan’s life (as well as his medical and scientific innovations, he was known with his partner Francis for being the first gay couple to sign a civil partnership in 2005 and, when equal marriages were introduced in 2014, the ability to “backdate” their upgraded marriage meant that theirs was among the first same-sex marriages in England).

Somewhere along the line, the idea changed. Instead of a scientist living in Torquay, Supersonic Man focuses on Adam (Dylan Aiello), a queer journalist who lives with his teacher boyfriend in Brighton. When Adam’s limp (something we’re told about but not shown) is diagnosed as the onset of MND, his prognosis does not look good: the disease is predicted to progress upwards, until his body can no longer support his breathing.

Adam’s reaction to his prognosis of approximately two years of life remaining is to fight. And it’s here where the similarities to Scott-Morgan’s story are strongest. Adam rails against NHS treatments that are designed to mitigate the effects of the encroaching disease, and instead wants to engage in early, often experimental treatments. This is where things start to get fuzzy; with the roboticist replaced by a party boy who’s more interested in threesomes and writing columns about anal bleaching, there is no concept of where the money for all the private treatment is coming from.

Matters aren’t helped by a book that keeps Adam and his friends as shallow and vapid for most of Act I. When a disagreement about Adam’s decisions causes a huge flare-up between he and his partner Darryl (Dominic Sullivan) we feel like we barely know anything about either character; certainly not enough to care why they’re shouting clichéd lines at one another.

The book also struggles with repetition, and with some uncomfortable (and often downright bizarre) tonal shifts. A serious scene that threatens to get to the heart of what it means to be facing one’s own mortality will get interrupted for a bit of camp silliness, usually involving supporting ensemble James Lowrie, Jude St James and Mali Wen Davies playing comedic caricatures. It’s as if Burgess is switching from Channel 4 to CBeebies and back.

There are some strong vocal performances, most notably from Sullivan, who fares much better with his opportunities to sing than he does with his stilted dialogue. Burgess’ songs lean heavily towards 1960s and 1970s numbers, ably arranged and performed by musical director Aaron Clingham. And Davies, making her professional debut, does her level best to steal the show. It’s clear there is more to come from her; so much so that it makes the casting of the stereotypical role of “plus sized woman as aromantic comic relief” feel even more annoyingly predictable than usual.

But other problems remain. Most notable is that so little of the musical is presented from Adam’s perspective at all. In Act I, we get more songs about how hard it is to be the boyfriend of someone with MND than we do about the central character’s own thought processes. The core dilemma, of someone determined to remain a vital and vibrant figure in the face of a disease that is destined to rob him of that, often feels like it’s sidelined rather than being pushed to the forefront.

There are also discussions about the dangers of treating Adam’s condition as something of a media sideshow, despite the awful reality show he commissions (written by Burgess as if everybody who works in television has the IQ of a fridge magnet) and, indeed, this musical doing just that. We’re told too that, as his worsening state means he has to use a wheelchair, he has become invisible. The irony of us being told that by Sullivan’s Darryl, rather than by Adam (who is right there next to him) seems to be unintentional.

Indeed, all the way through, Supersonic Man seems to want to have its cake and eat it. It wants to tell a serious story, but reverts to silliness any time it thinks it might get too earnest, getting in its own way.

Musical The Little Big Things also tackled a fit and active person facing a life-changing disability, while also challenging the narrative of the “isn’t disability terrible” message that can so easily be at the heart of such a story. That line is a hard one to traverse, and Supersonic Man seems to be more content telling us that it is doing so than showing us.

There will undoubtedly be moments of recognition for anyone who has had to nurse a loved one through physical, or mental, terminal decline. There are points at which Supersonic Man leans into those moments, and promises to lay bear the tumult of emotions on both sides. But it needs a stronger hand than Burgess’ on the pen to actually write that musical, and avoid falling back into the camp and twee.

Scott Matthewman