(FEAR)

We live in scary times – something Gareth Clark is all too aware of. This one-man show, partly performed in a crocodile mask, is essentially an hour-long monologue of everything he’s scared of. It could be brave—confronting the horrors of the world—but it’s lacking story or structure, analysis or insight, even if Clark gives an energetic, committed performance.

We start in childhood, where everything is dangerous – pylons and sockets are deadly, sweets and puppies are traps, God and Father Christmas will punish you if you’re not good. Getting older, and fear keeps us stuck in miserable jobs, worrying about overdrafts and mortgages and credit ratings. Drinks and drugs may provide some relief (cue overextended dance to ‘Blue Monday’, while Clark pretends to be high).

But any thin narrative thread snaps here, and the rest of the show is just a catalogue of all the ominous stuff of modern life. Facebook is weird, isn’t it? Ooh, maybe social media makes us lonely. Terrorism: before Muslim fundamentalism, we had the IRA you know! We live in a surveillance state!

There are personal fears dredged over too – of not being good enough, wasting life, getting old. But we’re all kept awake by this stuff; we don’t need it parroted back at us by a 49-year-old white man with nothing to add. It isn’t cathartic; it’s barely even artistic – more like getting stuck in the pub with a bloke getting increasingly, impotently worked up. As in that situation, one eye is on the exit.