Steven Webb takes the stage alone in Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen, Marcelo Dos Santos's Fringe First-winning comedy, which returns to London this winter at The Other Palace. Here is everything you need to know before you book.
A one-man play with a title that runs to ten words is not the obvious candidate for a Christmas season, which is part of the appeal. Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen comes back to London for the first time in three years, running at The Other Palace from Thursday 19 November 2026 to Sunday 10 January 2027. It arrives after a tour of Australia and its American premiere at Studio Theatre in Washington, DC, and it completes the venue's season of work from Francesca Moody Productions, the company behind Fleabag and Baby Reindeer.
Who is starring in Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen?
There is one performer and one part. Steven Webb plays The Comedian, carrying the whole hour on his own, as he did for the Washington production.
Spotlight on Steven Webb
Webb has been on the London stage since childhood, and his best-known stage roles sit at opposite ends of the musical and the straight play. In Alan Bennett's The History Boys he played Posner in the second company of that production; in the West End run of The Book of Mormon he played Elder McKinley and Moroni. More recently he was Storyteller 2 in the UK premiere of the country musical Shucked. Television viewers may know him from Bad Girls, Miranda and The Inbetweeners. The Comedian asks for both halves of that career at once: a stand-up's timing, landing joke after joke to a room, and an actor's control as the act starts to let the darker material through. He has already lived with the part in Washington, so London gets a performance that has been played in. Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen is booking now.
What is Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen about?
The narrator is a stand-up, thirty-six, single for longer than he would like and anxious as a profession as much as a temperament. Then he meets someone who looks very much like the right man, and promptly sets about getting everything wrong. The play keeps asking whether his new partner is quite what he seems, and how far a comedian will go for a laugh when his own life is the material.
The form is a comedy set that keeps sliding into confession, which is where the play finds its edge: the jokes are real jokes, and the audience laughs, and then has to decide what it has been laughing at. The Guardian's four-star notice called it a "compelling and troubling character study with some killer punchlines". Be warned that the language is sexually explicit, and the venue's content guidance lists descriptions of consensual and non-consensual sex, simulated intercourse and drug use.
Who is behind the production?
The play is written by Marcelo Dos Santos, whose other work includes Backstairs Billy, and it won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Matthew Xia directs, with design by Kat Heath, lighting by Elliot Griggs and sound by Max Pappenheim. Production management is by JBPM.
The producer is Francesca Moody Productions, and the play was first developed with support from ImPOSSIBLE Producing through its programme The Island.
When and where can I see it?
Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen runs in the main house at The Other Palace, 12 Palace Street, SW1E 5JA, a short walk from Victoria station, from Thursday 19 November 2026 to Sunday 10 January 2027. It plays at 9.15pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, at 7pm on Fridays, at 2pm and 7pm on Thursdays and Saturdays, and at 3pm on Sundays.
The running time is one hour and five minutes with no interval, and the show is recommended for ages 14 and over. Tickets currently start at £24 on our Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going To Happen page.
What else should I book if I like it?
- An Oak Tree, another Francesca Moody production at The Other Palace, puts a different guest performer on stage unrehearsed each night, until Sunday 15 November 2026.
- Garry Starr: Classic Penguins is the third show in the same season, running at The Other Palace until Sunday 3 January 2027, for comedy of a far less anxious kind.
- Murder, She Didn't Write is comedy made up on the spot, opening at the Duchess Theatre on Monday 16 November 2026.
- The Book of Mormon is the musical in which Webb played Elder McKinley, and it is still running in the West End.
