REVIEW: F.E.A.R. (Galeri, Caernarfon)

Every one of us lives in fear every day, from the moment we know what being afraid feels like, to the moment when the ultimate fear consumes us. We might not be consciously aware of all our fears, but they are there, programmed into us, subliminally controlling the way we live our lives, the way we react and respond. And then there are the greater fears that we recognise all too well - the phobias and the nightmares and the manias.

Gareth Clark is one half of the performing duo Mr and Mrs Clark (he's the Mr), but for F.E.A.R, he works alone in what is a solo show written and performed from the very depths of his heart and soul. A result of 12 months of research into both his own and other cultures, F.E.A.R is both an intensely personal work and also terrifyingly relevant to almost everybody who sees it. It speaks to every member of the audience as much as it does on behalf of Gareth Clark.

Belonging/ Perthyn (Galeri, Caernarfon)

The ultimate power of theatre - as with any art form - is to provoke an emotional response. Whether it makes the audience laugh or cry, outraged or embarrassed, theatre should provoke a reaction. Nobody should leave the auditorium thinking about what to have for tomorrow night's dinner. Live theatre should leave a mark.

In the case of playwright Karin Diamond's Belonging/ Perthyn, most people left the theatre in tears, because this is one very powerful, and beautifully told, play. Five years in the making, Belonging is the brainchild of the Cardiff-based Re-Live project, which works with communities to share stories and transform them into live theatrical experiences. Diamond was inspired to write a play about the ups and downs, the truths and myths, of living with dementia in 21st century Wales after working with a Japanese theatre-maker who specialises in promoting a greater understanding of the condition through performance.

Iphigenia in Splott (Galeri, Caernarfon)

Let's get it out of the way first: Sophie Melville is remarkable in this play. It's a one-act, one-woman monologue which has a blistering story to tell, with twists and turns, shocks and surprises, joy and tragedy, just like your average episode of EastEnders.

But Melville doesn't just perform the monologue; she doesn't merely act out the role of Effie. Melville is Effie, she becomes her. With so much theatre, and particularly monologues, you can sense the performers acting. It's a largely unavoidable characteristic of theatre, the shared conceit between performer and audience that this is all artifice, it's pretend, make-believe. "We've paid good money to come and watch you mess about on stage for two hours."

But not when you watch Iphigenia in Splott. Because the performance is so magnetic, and the writing so truthful, that you're sucked into the fiction yourself, helped enormously by Effie's direct address to the audience at the start of the piece. It includes you, accuses you, and involves you. I was there with Effie in the Great Western pub, I was there with her in the bedroom with Lee, and I was certainly there with her in the ambulance. Boy, was I there!

Triptych (Galeri, Caernarfon)

Gwyn Emberton and Albert Garcia in Triptych III

Most of us cannot imagine what it's truly like to serve in a war zone. All the role-playing video games and CGI-bolstered Hollywood blockbusters in the world cannot truly recreate what it must be like to actually be there, in the thick of it, day in, day out, with no way out and no real desire to find one. There is no Stop or Off button for the soldiers who serve Queen and country on our behalf. There is only the honour, and the horror.

Triptych is the brainchild of De Oscuro producer Judith Roberts, who has been working with ex-service personnel and their families for almost 18 months to get a better idea of what it feels like to be in conflict situations such as Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan or the Falklands. We have a good idea what it looks like to be there, but the actual emotional impact it has on the soldier, the mental legacy they are left with upon demob, can be elusive, often because veterans cannot or will not discuss their thoughts.

Stories from a Crowded Room (Galeri, Caernarfon)

Have you ever been in a restaurant enjoying your food, perhaps a juicy steak or a spicy jambalaya, and the waitress has asked if "everything's OK with your meal"? And you've said yes, but actually meant no? Have you ever tried to avoid someone you recognise by crossing the street so that you didn't have to speak to them? Have you ever tried to connect with someone, but they just missed the point?

The intricacies of human nature are what Stories from a Crowded Room is all about. It's about love and loss, rejection and companionship, anger and solitude. What Earthfall has accomplished in this magnificently immersive dance performance is highly effective, affecting and intensely personal to those gathered to observe.

Tân (Galeri, Caernarfon)

Anybody familiar with the history of the Welsh language and the campaign to save it from dying out in recent years will have heard of the Welsh Not. For those unaware, it was a wooden sign which some schoolchildren in Wales were forced to wear around their necks if they were ever caught speaking Welsh. The board would be passed from child to child depending on who was last caught speaking Welsh, and the child left with it at the end of the day was punished.

It was part of a concerted effort in the early Victorian era to stamp out Welsh and drive it into extinction, but luckily attitudes changed toward the language in the 20th century and over the last 100 years or so there have been dedicated efforts to rescue it from the brink and repopularise it.

Y Tŵr (Galeri, Caernarfon)

William Gwenlyn Parry's classic Y Tŵr (The Tower) hasn't been performed for more than 15 years, and so this revival from Invertigo Theatre is much overdue, especially as the play is so well known across Wales, among those who remember the first production in the 1970s, those who saw the S4C film, and those who remember studying it at school.

A tower of over-sized building blocks dominates the simple but focused set. These blocks make up the titular tower, which itself represents the climb every man and woman must endure through life as they progress from childhood to adolescence to adulthood and ultimately old age.

At the start of the play an everyman and his everywoman come into the world as playful children, happy to simply mess about, chat and rib each other. They start out life without a care in the world, as do most of us: it is only the process of growing up which can deprive us of such innocence.