Character List
VAL / Late 60s/early 70s. Long time employee of the supermarket. Kindly, gruff. She misses ‘the way things used to be’, she misses her kids. She misses feeling seen and important.
SUNITA / Mid 50s Suburban doctor. A single mum, and second generation migrant who struggles to make room for her own emotions. Her mother has just died. They had a complex relationship.
NIAMH / 19, non-binary teen. Was a superstar overachiever in highschool and the pressure has kind of frozen them. Entering their second gap year, working at the supermarket where they’ve had a part time job since age 15.
BETH / 36, Funny, warm, practical. The head of sales for a big agriculture company based in Yorkshire. Married for 9 years to Poppy who we never meet, and they have two primary-school-aged children. She and JESS had a brief but profound fling ten years ago that she still thinks about sometimes, especially when life becomes monotonous.
ADAM / 44 Engineer. His mannerisms make him unlikeable, but he is actually a very nice person. He loves maths. He has a teenage daughter who is struggling with agoraphobia. This fills his head most of the time.
JESS / 35 Romantic, unworldly. She’s a painter, who moved to Spain 11 years ago for a residency in Barcelona. Things didn’t really pan out, she doesn’t have the career she wants and she’s drifting. She just moved back to Manchester where she attended university before her overseas move. Jess is the only one who doesn’t live in this neighborhood, she’s visiting a friend for dinner who lives nearby and has popped in for a bottle of wine and some strawberries. She’s always been in love with BETH, no-one has ever come close.
Song List
1. Super (COMPANY)
2. Have you met Niamh (NIAMH + COMPANY)
3. So Familiar (BETH & JESS)
4. When the lights go out (COMPANY)
5. Lucky dice (BETH & JESS)
6. Beautiful, powerful woman (SUNITA)
7. Milo (ADAM)
8. Goodnight (BETH & JESS)
9. Val’s Song (VAL)
10. What we do in the dark (COMPANY)
11. She (BETH & JESS)
12. Super (reprise) (COMPANY)
Song Demos & Rehearsal Room Audio
Super
‘Super’ is a one-act musical for six actor-singers and a band of four musicians.
‘Super’ follows a diverse group of Mancunians over the hour they happen to cross paths, during
their weekly shop at a suburban grocery store. Though not explicitly stated, the supermarket is a co-operative, and its history in intimately woven with Manchester’s industrial past, a cultural force which is understood to different degrees by various characters. When an error in the store’s security system plunges them into darkness and traps them inside the building, the routine social order of the supermarket is catastrophically upset. Together in the dark, they start to unravel the drama, tragedy and magic that lies behind the neutral facades of ‘ordinary people.’
Super was commissioned through Antipodes Theatre's 'Winterlab' Programme and had a first R&D period in July 2025. It has since been announced as the 2025 winner of the Stephen Oliver Award for new musical theatre from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, to support further development in 2026.
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Rehearsal room images from the R&D in Melbourne at Antipodes Theatre, July 2025, taken by 3 Fates Media.
Mel O'Brien as Beth, Kiara Danielle as Jess, J Ridler as Niamh, Andy Freeborn– Musical Dramaturg, Emilie Collyer– Script Dramaturg, Nishla Smith– writer/composer
Draft Script excerpt
