‘Black Superhero’ review
This messy but entertaining dark comedy sees actor Danny Lee Wynter make his debut as a playwright and also star as David, an awkward, hangdog gay Black actor whose ‘career’ has led to him working as a children’s party entertainer for his sister Syd (Rochenda Sandall). His lack of success is particularly galling when contrasted with his friends. There’s buff, disciplined Raheem (Eloka Ivo), whose career is going well and love-life even better (he’s on elite dating app Raya, no less). And in a whole different league, there’s King (Dyllón Burnside), who is the star of a major superhero movie franchise and seems to have the world at his feet. David, however, is like the ghost at the feast: glumly refusing to drink or do drugs with them, dourly complaining about their aversion to using their platforms to publicly raise issues affecting the gay or Black communities, critiquing their directors for not being Black or gay enough. It’s a sprawling and mercurial play that frequently feels like it could have done with a round or two more with a dramaturg. But Daniel Evans’s production is given a sense of coherence by Wynter’s wickedly funny writing – some of the more genuinely outrageous one-liners bring the house down – and also Wynter’s own grounding performance. It would be pushing it to describe David as a Candide-like innocent. But there is an endearingly everyman-like quality to his refusal to have a sexy good time, that’s only magnified as he embarks upon an ill-advised dalliance
