A cross between a solo play and stand-up routine, Feeling Afraid… is a conversation between the excellent Samuel Barnett and his audience. Marcelo Dos Santos’s script demands a lot from its performer: it’s funny, wordy and twisty, with lightning-fast transitions between emotional states as it breaks and rebuilds the fourth wall. Thankfully, Barnett is more than up to the challenge. Nimble and knowing, he has the skilled stand-up's ability to let us in on a joke while remaining emotionally connected.

It’s compelling stuff, highly watchable, with lots to admire and plenty of laughs. It all trots along quite nicely until a final emotional ending where the stand-up’s mic is put aside. It’s then that you realise Barnett and Dos Santos have been holding out on you, as a deeper, richer and more resonant element sucker-punches you. Perhaps some of this emotional intensity would have been welcome at other points in the show too, but maybe that’s the point. Nonetheless, this a polished, funny and ultimately highly successful slice of entertainment.

Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen, Space Theatre, run ended.