Oliv­er de Rohan’s moth­er’s neigh­bours think she is going mad. Oliv­er is pret­ty sure she’s always been mad. She’s always been fan­ci­ful any­way, telling him sto­ries of fairies and tani­wha.  Did she real­ly meet his father in a paper world? How did she get there? How did she get back? What is real­ly going on?

Framed as a fairy­tale book, each chap­ter con­tains anoth­er sto­ry until we are sev­er­al lay­ers deep.  Oliv­er de Rohan, and Ralph McCub­bin How­ell per­son­i­fy dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters as we fol­low Elle Woot­ton (Mag­gie, the afore­men­tioned moth­er) through her sto­ry. The myth­i­cal ele­ments play off the real world ele­ments until they col­lide in a sat­is­fy­ing man­ner.  There are some love­ly char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions on stage.  Han­na Smith’s pup­pets  are brought to life by the actors. The sound design by Tane Upjohn-Beat­son is inte­gral to the sto­ry­telling as is the light­ing design by Mar­cus McShane.

Fea­tur­ing singing, pup­pets, shad­ow play, and a delight­ful sense of the eerie. What a great start to Fringe 2013.