Mixing the Swedish notion of Årsgång, an annual pagan ritual allowing insight into the future, with Cinderella, Arabian Nights and Irish folklore, among others, Yearwalk creates a postmodernist piece that walks the spooky path of the Grimm brothers.

The audience is welcomed into the eerie set-up by masked creatures stalking the stage, and their sinister personas are never far from sight nor atmosphere. The masks are creepy in the best way: just real enough to be unnerving and just caricatured enough to lighten the touch. Their omnipresence is filtered throughout the play, as it moves outside of the framework - of a mother undertaking a Yearwalk to see her daughter’s future – into classical tales. The first few times this occurs, it is stilted and unclear where the production is going, however. While a ‘picketing’ Cinderella is certainly entertaining, the comedic element of this aspect seemed out of place with the rest of the play’s uncanniness, and the innocent notion of Disney and all the connotations that come with it is never far from mind. I was never quite sure whether I was supposed to be finding it funny, which the romance and fairy-godmother plot would suggest, or taking it seriously, as the rest of the play as a whole set it up to be. The next episode, the tale of Ali Baba and his ‘Open Sesame’ trick bridges the gap a bit better, introducing important motifs of death and temptation. And, fortunately, by the third narrative, the play begins to come together more satisfyingly, where the threat and lure of faeries is made truly unsettling by Katie Robertson, as a petite and all-too-innocent creature of seduction.

However, it is the final half of the play, the origins of which I am unsure, that was the real delight. Two sisters sharing a lover leads to the murder of one, set against the background of artful lighting and clever silhouetted choreography to create a visual feast. The poetic justice carried out is curiously satisfying and full of pathos. Elise Limon is undoubtedly the star of the production, as she uses dance in this section and the next to electrify the stage. Her crazed performance in the final scenes left me feeling as if I too were going slightly mad in the forest, and set the ending up well. The live music only added to such effects and made the production extremely immersive.

While each actor and narrative worked very well independently, it remains that as a whole Yearwalk didn’t entirely come together. A thematic or unifying link was absent, and though the slow descent into darkness between tales worked well, some aspects were irreconcilable with the main themes and atmosphere. Nevertheless, having had no idea what to expect from this production, I left feeling that I had enjoyed it – even if I was slightly concerned about those masks reappearing in my nightmares!