Studio Theatre's Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen Brings a Darkly Funny Hit to DC
After years of swiping, a permanently single, professionally neurotic stand-up comic finally meets Mr. Right — and then proceeds to do everything wrong. That's the irresistible setup of Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen, the darkly comedic solo show now making its U.S. premiere at Studio Theatre, where it plays through July 12, 2026, in the intimate Mead Theatre.
Written by Marcelo Dos Santos and directed by Matthew Xia, the piece arrives in Washington trailing an impressive pedigree. It began life at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022, where it won a coveted Fringe First, before transferring to London's Bush Theatre and later touring Australia with stops at Arts Centre Melbourne, the Adelaide Festival, and the Sydney Opera House. Produced by Francesca Moody Productions — the team behind breakout sensations Fleabag and Baby Reindeer — the show has built its reputation on the same alchemy that turned those small-stage works into cultural phenomena: a single performer, a confessional voice, and a story that sneaks up on you.
At the center of it all is The Comedian, a 36-year-old gay man living in London who has never once been in a real relationship. Insecure, anxious, and constitutionally unwilling to lower his guard, he fills his calendar with hookups and dates arranged on "The App," collecting emotionally absent encounters while quietly insisting he has no fear of dying alone. Then he meets The American, and everything he thought he knew about himself starts to come apart. Over the course of one summer of love, the relationship deepens — art galleries become fun, home-cooked dinners and grim documentaries become a routine, even his own boyish figure begins to fill out — but our nervous hero can't quite relax. He cannot shake the conviction that, sooner or later, something terrible is going to happen. And so, rather than let himself enjoy a good thing, he spirals into self-sabotage, secrecy, and self-hatred, narrating the whole disastrous descent with razor-sharp wit.
Steven Webb delivers all of it in a tour-de-force one-man performance, playing not only The Comedian but the entire cast of characters orbiting him: the earnest American, a longtime doctor hookup, a pair of working comics, an ineffectual therapist, and an assortment of others, each rendered distinct through quicksilver shifts in accent and posture. Webb works the room like a seasoned headliner, mic cord in hand, moving on and off the stage and getting right up close with the audience, then dropping the bit entirely for moments of raw, unguarded vulnerability. The result is a lightning-fast, genre-blurring blend of stand-up, storytelling, and theatre that unfolds at a breakneck pace.
The production team turns Studio's Mead Theatre into a convincing comedy club, with set and costume design by Kat Heath, lighting by Elliot Griggs that snaps between moods as The Comedian bounces from thought to thought, and sound design by Max Pappenheim. Be warned: the humor is gleefully crude, sexually explicit, and not for the easily scandalized. But underneath the filthy jokes and frantic energy is a genuinely tender meditation on intimacy, attachment, and the terror of being truly seen. The show understands that fear and vulnerability go hand in hand, and it makes a quietly powerful case that real connection isn't possible without both.
Running 75 minutes with no intermission, Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen is the rare comedy that can strip the paint off the walls one minute and break your heart the next. It plays through July 12, 2026, at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th Street NW.