The Last Man

Southwark Playhouse Elephant

Playing until 13th June 2026

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Photo credit: Rich Lakos

{PR Gifted ticket}

A mysterious virus has swept the globe. Cities have fallen silent. Armed with supplies to last a year, one survivor locks themselves inside Bunker B-103 to wait out the collapse of civilisation. As the days turn into months, isolation begins to distort reality. The bunker becomes both a sanctuary and a prison. Time fractures. Memories resurface. At its heart, the show poses a single, deceptively simple question: is staying alive enough, or should he open the bunker door and confront what remains outside?

The first thing that strikes you on entering the auditorium is Shankho Chaudhuri’s set, which is sparse and inventive in equal measure. The Seoul basement flat feels lived-in and credible: a few personal effects, a stockpile of supplies, all of it rooting us firmly in a specific place and culture. The economy of the space, the careful placement of objects gives the bunker a recognisable Korean aesthetic, sensibility, humanity and particularity it might otherwise lack. Cheolmin Cho’s lighting design further elevates the set, washes the space in touches of colour that rise and fall with the emotional temperature of the piece, brightening with our survivor’s flickers of hope before draining away as despair takes hold again. It is a design that does real dramatic work without ever drawing attention to itself. The intimate space at the Southwark Playhouse suits the claustrophobic premise, drawing the audience into the bunker rather than simply placing them in front of it.

Equally impressive is the band. Seungyeon Kwon’s score, arranged here by Garbriel Chernick, blends rock and violin in a way that gives the show its spine. The live rock score surges and recedes like the survivor’s own psychological state – fury one moment, something raw and quiet the next. The musicians are quite simply exceptional: skilled, sensitive and completely in service of the story. When the music soars, it genuinely soars.

Written by Jishik Kim and directed here by Daljung Kim, with dramaturgy by Jethro Compton, the production blends gig theatre, existential thriller and social commentary. The survivor’s love of film gives the script an enjoyable layer of self-awareness. References to Night of the Living Dead, The Martian and Parasite arrive not as cheap jokes but as the character’s way of making sense of the world through the only lens he has.

Lex Lee delivers a performance with quiet and disciplined restraint – and it is all the more powerful for it. In a lesser production, the isolation of a one-person show can tempt a performer towards the theatrical, leaning into the extremes of emotion to fill the silence. Lee resists that entirely. What emerges, gradually and with great care, is something far more universal than a man hiding from the undead. The zombies outside barely matter. The real battle is interior, a mind turning on itself in the absence of connection, company and purpose. It is a portrait of isolation that will resonate with anyone who has ever retreated from the world, whether pushed there by circumstance or drawn there by their own fears: the agoraphobic who finds the walls of home both refuge and cage, the grieving, the burned-out, the quietly withdrawn. Lee navigates this inner landscape with a naturalness that makes our time in a bunker feel not like an endurance but an experience. He carries us through the survivor’s year and by the time he faces his final choice, we are not watching a character decide. We are waiting, alongside him, to find out what happens next.

The show is not without its frustrations. The first act can feel as confined as its setting, the tempo circling without quite building. A live-streaming device, in which the survivor broadcast vlog messages to screens embedded in the set, suffers from technical stuttering that proves a persistent distraction. And some of the translated lyrics strain against the music rather than riding it. However, the show finds its footing in the second act. As the survivor’s mental state deteriorates and the possibility of other survivors flickers into view, the drama sharpens and the score catches fire. The ending is unsettling, ambiguous, quietly hopeful and lingers long after the lights come up.

The show arrived in Seoul as a web musical in 2020 before transitioning to the stage, and its origins are occasionally visible: some of the storytelling relies on the kind of heightened, mythic shorthand that plays better on screen than in a theatre. A few of the songs blur together the middle act, and the pacing dips before the final, emotionally charged confrontation with the bunker door.

There is something quietly audacious about staging a two-hour rock musical for a single performer in a bunker. Yet that is exactly what the Last Man, the cult Korean musical, now demands of its audience, and with remarkable nerve, mostly get away with. It explores resilience, hope and the fragile nature of human connection in a world stripped bare. It is flawed, but frequently thrilling piece of theatre, proof that a single performer, a near-empty room, and the right band can ask bigger questions about what it means to be human than many a show ten times its scale.

Creatives

Book and Lyrics: Jishik Kim

Music: Seungyeon Kwon

Dramaturg: Jethro Compton

Director: Daljung Kim

Musical Director: Amy Hsu

Set Design: Shankho Chaudhuri

Lighting Design: Cheolmin Cho

Costum Design: Anna Kelsey

Lead Producer: NEO, Inc (Hyunjae Lee)

Executive Producers: Derek Lee, Tayn Yeo