Often, the most successful productions are born of collaboration. The right people, at the right time, working together to create magic – the kind of magic that transcends what any one individual might be able to conjure.
Francesca Moody might be a household name now for producing such runaway hits as Fleabag and Baby Reindeer, but that Midas touch really just reflects her ability to find those lightning-in-a-bottle collaborations and get them in front of audiences. One such recent blockbuster is Feeling Afraid as if Something Terrible is Going to Happen, studded with accolades from 2022’s Edinburgh Fringe and (at the time of writing) tearing down houses in Melbourne and Sydney before heading to SA for the Adelaide Festival.
Another direct-address monologue, like Fleabag before it, Feeling Afraid… puts an unnamed stand-up comedian (played by The History Boys’ Samuel Barnett) in front of a mic to tell us his story. Delivered mostly as a stand-up routine, the monologue is an electric journey through awkward dates, casual sex, comedy gigs, health panics and – eventually – a burgeoning relationship with a kindly handsome American. It’s lightness and darkness and everything in between – a relatable study of love, self-doubt and truthfulness through the lens of comedy.
What becomes abundantly clear in our conversation with Barnett (he’s having a lovely time in Melbourne: “there’s a certain buoyancy here that we pretty much don’t have back home”) is how much he credits the show’s success to both the writing and direction.
“I feel so fortunate that every now and then, over the years, there’s been a job that I’ve had – and it is usually new writing – where suddenly there’s this extraordinary script that matches what I can do with it,” he says.
The writer, in this instance, is his friend Marcelo Dos Santos. “Marcelo said, ‘I’m writing you this monologue.’ And I was like, ‘Well, sure. I mean, what’s that going to be?’ And then he presented me with this first draft – which was not a first draft as far as I was concerned, because we haven’t really changed it. All we’ve done is cut it.”
“The script,” he expands, “is a lot of Marcelo’s personal experience and experiences of friends of his, but the voice is mine. I don’t understand how he’s done it – that’s what’s so clever. He wrote it with my cadence in mind. So it’s weird getting a script where you go, ‘oh yeah, I know how to say that.’”
The third ingredient in this alchemy is Matthew Xia’s direction. “He’s done that thing where you wouldn’t necessarily know it was directed,” Barnett explains. “But it is directed within an inch of its life. Every head movement, every foot placement, whether my foot is up on the stool or down, all of that tiny stuff. It was him that came up with the idea of doing it with a stool and a microphone – that is all Matthew.”
So how much of him is in the character? “I think my stand-up comedian persona is probably just a much more exaggerated, energetic version of my inner core,” he says. “I basically get to amplify that and put that on stage in a very physical way. And it’s been joyous because I’m so often told how subtle you have to be, or how little you have to do. And actually, what I really enjoy in this show is being able to take all the brakes off and go for it. And then choose my moments where everything is subtler and everything comes down. I really enjoy playing the levels. It’s a real acting workout. And I love it.”
Barnett certainly deserves praise for his uncanny imitation of a comedian in the show – but he insists he couldn’t be one for real.
“I need something to hide behind,” he says. “I’m not interested in being a stand-up comic who uses his own life and can get up and expose in that way. I need a character. So for me, all of it was on the page, and as soon as I got the microphone in my hand, started trying to deal with the microphone lead, all of that just became like a natural language for me.
“I’ve always been drawn to comedy,” he continues. “My favorite thing is finding the darkness in it. I think I’ve always been able to make people laugh; I’ve always had an overly mobile face. I learned a lot about comic timing from Frances de la Tour, Richard Griffiths and Clive Merrison on The History Boys. I was like, ‘how are you working that line? How are you doing nothing with that and getting that laugh?’
“But in terms of crafting the stand-up comedian style, we didn’t want to copy anyone,” he adds. “There were certain comedians that we felt had the same sensibility, like Simon Amstell, Joe Lycett, Rhys Nicholson… but ultimately, you can only do your own. We’ve all got our own stand-up comedy version of ourselves in us, and so I had to find mine. But it came from the writing – and from Matthew.”
Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen, Adelaide Festival Centre, until 2 March