Festival review: Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen
Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen offers us stand-up comedy, threatens us with devastation, but in the end, rouses hope. Hopefully you won’t swipe past.
Feeling afraid as if something terrible is going to happen is something that in today’s world we are all familiar with, right?
Right?
I’m sure you do. The unnamed subject of this piece certainly thinks so, and wants to tell us all about it in a packed house in the Festival Centre’s abyssal Space Theatre. During an alleged comedy gig, no less.
Compellingly written by Marcelo Dos Santos, Feeling Afraid is a blisteringly millennial hour of neuroses, sexual horror stories, and a desperate struggle for love and success. The piece has had acclaimed runs at the Edinburgh Fringe and in London, and now is touring Australia this year, pleasingly with its original performer Samuel Barnett.
The play adopts the conceit of stand-up comedy, complete with red curtain backdrop, mic stand, and nondescript stool in the corner. This reviewer also hoped for an onstage prop 12-pack of bottled water a là the late Robin Williams, but alas, the stage is otherwise bare. This comedy setting is only artifice though; it is almost as if we are seated within the mind palace of this comedian as he grapples with his discomforts around intimacy and his endless need for an audience’s laughter.
The Olivier nominated Barnett – of History Boys and Dirk Gently fame – is commanding in presence and physicality as he meticulously weaves an unreliable narrative of an unreliable comedian navigating the ever-objectifying worlds of dating apps and live art. When a phone goes off mid-show, he flawlessly suggests in-character that the audience member answers it, quipping that it “might be important”.
Director Matthew Xia aptly fuses minimalist sound (by Max Pappenheim) and lighting design (by Elliot Griggs) and precise dialogue to keep the piece flowing, never allowing a dull moment onstage. Pop culture smash cuts complete with cartoon sound effects make for striking transitions, but there are therefore moments where we grow hungry for raw emotion or chaotic stagecraft. There is a clear choice here to favour the words and pace of the piece over feeling, which feels stylistically concomitant with Edinburgh fare.
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Dos Santos’s self-deprecating and exacting depictions of queer hookup culture and his personal neuroses makes this piece uniquely authentic, whilst still posing deeper questions about the role of sex in our lives, and the paradoxes of success. An engaging sequence features the running inner monologue of the character during a comedy set, where we explore the near psychotic need for a laugh that sustains the genre. As there are moments where we crave just a little more unpredictability, this egomaniacal sequence stands out as memorable. Feeling Afraid is ultimately much lighter in tone than some of the past success stories of Moody Productions, but it is refreshing to see work examining our insecurities that offers hope rather than tragedy or trauma — particularly with a queer central character.
Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen is a slick hour of comic theatre from an award-winning cast and crew that mines the eternal millennial angst for deeper understanding and emerges with resounding laughter. It is a worthwhile addition to any balmy festival evening in Adelaide this season.
Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen is part of the 2025 Adelaide Festival, and is showing at Space Theatre until March 2
Read more 2025 Adelaide Festival coverage here on InReview