Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen
Description
A permanently single, professionally neurotic stand-up comedian finally meets his Mr Right – and then does everything wrong.
Is Mr Right quite what he seems? And just how far will the comedian go to get a laugh?
Marcelo Dos Santos's play Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen is a dark and biting one-man show about vulnerability, intimacy, ego and truth. It premiered in the Roundabout at the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, produced by Francesca Moody Productions, directed by Matthew Xia, and starring Samuel Barnett.
The play received an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, and Samuel Barnett was named the first winner of The Stage Edinburgh Awards 2022 for his performance.
Reviews
"Very entertaining and sharply funny."
- Lyn Gardner, Stagedoor
"Is this the male Fleabag? Marcelo Dos Santos's fevered monologue about a romance on the verge of a nervous breakdown... holds us spellbound for an hour."
- The Times
"Funny and pleasingly absurdist... An entertaining, sometimes outrageous hour, brought to a very skilled climax."
- Time Out
"Unsettling and deeply clever... The questions posed by Dos Santos's knife-sharp writing are satisfyingly complex... It's a very funny show, but also a telling one and it confirms Dos Santos as a really interesting writer, using an examination of the mechanisms of comedy to peer closely into the workings of the human heart."
- WhatsOnStage
"Blending dark humour, pathos and a hearty dash of millennial angst, [this] deserves to be the next Fleabag... the gag-count is ridiculously high and the writing overall has a Bennettian finesse... it's enviably accomplished."
- Telegraph
"A cleverly constructed piece of writing, and often very funny."
- The Stage
"Enthralling... a compelling and troubling character study with some killer punchlines."
- Guardian
"Outrageously entertaining and endlessly surprising... an extraordinary piece of theatre."
- The Skinny
"Frank, funny and occasionally filthy... a nice piece of writing, following in the footsteps of Fleabag."
- Independent
"Pristine writing... both hilarious and heart-wrenching."
- Fest Mag