Danny Lee Wynter is a playwright, Olivier-nominated actor, activist and columnist. Black Superhero is his debut play and he is playing David, the leading role. It’s about being born black and gay in a straight white world. It’s about black masculinity, gay sex, identity and race. It feels cathartic.
David is a queer actor about to audition for Horatio in Hamlet, a role he does not want to play in an all-black production, directed by a white woman, in which the cast sing Negro spirituals.
David, touching 40, is looking for somebody to love. He feels he has missed out. There is no shining knight in armour in his life. He does not feel he is masculine enough. He doesn’t like his more successful friends having more sex than he does. He had a traumatic childhood. There is a vivid description of him, a 9-year-old, stealing a porno playing card and being thrashed by his dad.
David begins a relationship with King, a hugely successful actor (who is in a long-time open marriage with a white liberal gay) and then goes on to indulge himself, plunging into a world of sex, drugs and hero worship. His life spirals out of control.
American actor Dyllon Burnside is charismatic as King, who has landed the lead role of a black superhero in a Marvel-type blockbuster epic space adventure movie. It’s a role he is not enjoying. King wants to be a serious actor and argues he is not queer enough, not black enough, to be the palatable version of what the studio thinks a black superhero is
Daniel Evans directs the upfront production Wynter’s stage directions want. They at least are not going to be sexless like some well-known gay films they could mention and do mention. Ryan Day’s lighting design, with its bright lights and neon triangles and smoke and darkness creates the real world David lives in and also the ecstatic fantasy world he lives in.
The actors are interesting. The acting’s good. There are lots of laughs, lots of one-liners; but the chatter and banter, finally, doesn’t add up to a play. Black Superhero remains a series of scenes.
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