Supersonic Man was inspired by real-life Peter Scott Morgan, a robotics expert diagnosed with MSD (motor neurone disease) who sought to extend his active life with robotics. He was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary, but Supersonic Man is a fictional story.
It is set in Brighton, and designer David Shields gives it a colourful seaside postcard-like backdrop, and, though the subject is serious, its energy is upbeat. It pitches straight in presenting a group of friends on the Brighton gay scene energetically exercising with Jude St James as their trainer and introducing journalist Darryl (Dominic Sullivan) and schoolteacher Adam (Dylan Aiello) as a happy gay couple.
As Adam begins to show symptoms of MND, writer Chris Burgess takes on the challenge of describing the disease and its effects not just on the sufferer but on those around him too, especially in this case partner Darryl, who finds himself not just lover but carer.
While not blind to the doctors’ prognosis, Adam is determined to live life as fully as possible; though there is an inevitable progression from crutches to Zimmer frame and then wheelchair, he challenges the progress to artificial feeding and colostomy bags when natural function breaks down. He wants that surgery earlier when it can be most effective and thinks towards robotic support.
Darryl and Adam agree to let the cameras turn their life into a reality TV show, which provides some of Supersonic Man’s many laughs, though this could do with more satirical bite. Aiello’s Adam gives us a glimpse of the fear that hides behind his positive approach and Sullivan the strain Darryl is under. There is a very true-to-life picture of the tensions and frustrations that can exist in the carer and cared-for relationship, especially perhaps those in loving relationship.
Jude St James, James Lowrie and Mali Wen Davies play the couple’s closest friends and double other roles. Davies, a girl with a big voice and nimble feet (and making her professional debut), is the insensitive TV director, Lowrie seems never still, flinging himself into Philip Joel’s choreography, and with St Jude, they generate the energy that gives Supersonic Man a bright surface. They bring strong voices to a tuneful score, though from where I was, the band sometimes swamps them, but prowling and twerking to the title song, they can be explosive.
This is an understanding picture of the situation of those faced with such illness, better at presenting its realities than at handling the play’s more fantastical elements.