Jojo’s convinced that he’s going to die. He doesn’t know quite when, and he doesn’t know quite how – life has so many dangers to choose from! – but he’s sure it’ll happen soon. So here we are, at the funeral he’s arranged for himself, where the very much alive-and-kicking Jojo muddles through a eulogy and remembers that he should have called his aunt. It’s a comic setup for a thoughtful exploration of what it’s like to live with perpetual anxiety, inside a restlessly racing brain.

The early motifs – “we’re all going to die”, “I want a party for my funeral”, “this is the great unknown” – are clearly deeply felt, but also relatively clichéd. The true insights come when we leave the funeral parlour and step into the therapy room. Jojo’s therapist appears in voiceover, though her occasional lapses into unprofessional laughter hint that she may be a projection of his own brain. Either way, she talks him gently through the inherent illogic of his peril-centred worldview, and coaxes him to explain more about the harshly ticking inner clock that seems to drive his life.

It’s a simple device for an accessible show, and writer-performer Jonas Feind captures Jojo’s torment with well-turned phrases. He lives his life on speed mode, he says, forever rushing to complete an impossible to-do list in advance of the inevitable end. At times he dissolves into a torrent of words, his thoughts accelerating out of control with the thump of a heartbeat playing in the background. Occasional dips into characters on the other end of the phone provide some welcome variety and an external viewpoint, gently signalling the collective eye-roll his perceived histrionics attract.

But the structure can feel a little haphazard, the voiceover strays into lecturing at times – and the ending’s a touch too easy for me. It’s one thing to see the wisdom in a therapist’s words; it’s another to apply them to your own life, and while Jojo seems to end up in a good place, we don’t get to witness much of the journey from here to there. The script also places quite a large bet on one specific cultural reference and, while the analogy still makes sense to someone who’s never encountered it, the density of in-jokes I was never going to get felt distancing for a while.

All the same, this is a funny and illuminating show, succeeding at something theatre so often strives for – to convey what it’s like to live inside someone else’s mind. You can never be sure, but the chances are that Jojo has years of success still ahead of him. And so, I hope, will this play.