BLACK SUPERHERO marks Danny Lee Wynter’s playwriting debut at the Royal Court – but apparently this Olivier Award-nominated actor is not one to do things by halves as he also leads the cast of this new production. Wynter plays David, an actor whose coterie of sexier, more successful and muscly friends includes King (Dyllón Burnside) – better known as superhero Craw from his artistically questionable but internationally renowned series of blockbuster movies. David’s romantic entanglement with King in his newly-open marriage opens up a discussion into relationships, race, manliness and fatherhood.

Danny Lee Wynter’s script is sharp, witty and unflinching, although it takes a couple of scenes to fully kick into gear. The play’s opening in the smoking area of a club is a little clunky and expository. When the playwright fully leans into the camp, fantastical indulgence of superheroes superimposed on David’s storyline, that’s when the play is at its strongest, although this script seems to spend a lot of the first act building up the courage to realise that it does not want to be entirely naturalistic.

The superhero trope, beyond creating a compelling aesthetic, is a nuanced framework within which Danny Lee Wynter unpicks ideas about masculinity and power dynamics, especially relating to father figures. David’s fractured relationship with his own father ripples out into all areas of his life, which we see in a fraught sexual encounter with Hollywood producer Kweku (Ako Mitchell).

The assembled cast look like they could have stepped out of a Hollywood movie onto the Royal Court stage – gorgeous and muscled and fit to give anyone a crisis of masculinity. The intimacy and chemistry between the ensemble feels organic and real, particularly the sibling relationship between Danny Lee Wynter’s David and his sparky but long-suffering sister Syd (Rochenda Sandall). Eloka Ivo also radiates an electric and warm energy with every cast member, working particularly well with the comic elements of the script. Ben Allen and Dominic Holmes lean into their clownish stereotypes as the awkward, foot-in-mouth gay white men, whose allyship only extends as far as sleeping with Black men.

The cast are guided by strong direction, including some lip-bitingly smooth and sexy movement and intimacy direction. The central relationship between David and King is complicated by David’s struggle to comprehend and navigate King’s relationship with his own husband in their open marriage. The exploration of open relationships seems rather one-sided and generally critical. It would have been interesting to explore a more positive view of polyamory outside of a paranoid and jealous viewpoint, and reductive view of non-monogamy as a ‘mid-life crisis’.

Joanna Scotcher’s design is slick, striking and cool. Combined with Ryan Day’s moody, sexy lighting design, Scotcher has created an extra-terrestrial framework of triangles, mirroring the love-triangle playing out on stage. Like a Hollywood blockbuster producer with money to burn, Scotcher throws in every effect and trick including haze, wires, flying set and sand to enfold the audience into the film industry’s world of illusion and glamor.

A funny, sexy, and ultimately poignant portrait of fragility in love. A truly visual spectacle and not one to miss.

**** Four stars

Reviewed by: Livvy Perrett

Black Superhero plays at the Royal Court until 29 April, with further information here.