The Last Man musical at Southwark Playhouse Elephant – review

The Last Man is a two-hour, ballad heavy, one-man musical about a lockdown. There are essentially no plot points besides the Survivor’s slowly running out of supplies and sanity, and a very mild twist at the end which I won’t spoil but which you’ll have plenty of time to guess as your mind gently wonders during the tenth power ballad.

Shankho Chaudhuri’s set is much as you would imagine a lockdown bunker flat: a pile of boxes, a stack of pot noodles, and a bunch of plants whose progress waxes and wanes throughout.

The point of difference, desperately needed with only one set and one performer, is a smattering of screens across the backstage, meant to broadcast the Survivor’s videos as he documents lockdown life on his phone for a future audience, and presumably to provide more movement on stage. Except the broadcast freezes every ten seconds or so, which negates their purpose, and is just incredibly annoying.

As always, Southwark has provided a live band, which is often a saving grace. But while the musicians are more than competent, the score is so bland, it may as well have been a recording.

The play’s one redeeming feature is Lex Lee, the survivor himself. Likely because the part is so intense, there are two potential leads who will regularly trade out throughout the run. For this performance we have Lee, and he is a powerhouse. It can’t be easy to carry a two-hour one-man musical with no plot; as well as having a fantastic vocal range, Lee does his very best to inject emotional range and moments of levity into the story. Unfortunately even a fantastic performance can’t redeem a piece with no content.

What with Covid in our recent history, I can see why a lockdown narrative is on the zeitgeist. But equally, we all just lived it. In this case, the circumstances are a little more severe: he is locked down, not from a virus, but from a zombie threat. So there are no quick trips to the supermarket to top up supplies, or awkward video calls with family, but the gist is the same: we never actually encounter a zombie. It would be one thing if this was simply a backdrop for a meatier plot, but it’s literally the whole story. Pretty much every point of progress in the plot is about the survivor running out of something: food, water, power, sanity, hope.

What with The Last Man being translated from Korean, it’s possible that a lot was lost in the translation. But ultimately I’m not sure we really need a story about a long lockdown, and I’m fairly confident we didn’t need it to be sung, and I’m certain we didn’t need it to be two hours long.