Erik de Waal engages us from the beginning, as he tells the audience how today’s stories came together. Four are Erik’s “Mythologies” – written and told in the style of traditional South African myths, but created to explain or come to terms with a world in transition. The others include a journey taken with fellow university students, a meeting with a native elder / Shaman / “Witch Doctor” and a tender story about Erik’s relationship with his Dad, the man who first told him stories. Lacking set, props (e.g. the fantastically creative puppets that he uses to engage young audiences in his telling of African folk tales) Erik relies on vivid imagery and his expressive voice to paint colourful word pictures and differentiate the characters that people his stories. When there’s an opportunity to hear stories from another land, told by a master storyteller, there’s an expectation that we’ll gain fresh perspectives on universal, age-old questions. There’s something lacking in this area, though it’s difficult to say why or how the stories miss this mark. While we leave the theatre with the warm feeling we have after an evening with good friends, we are no wiser and we have no insights into the deeper mysteries that the stories – at first - seem to promise.

Three and a half out of five stars.