STORIES entwine with one another in the layered narrative: sometimes it’s hard to keep track of how far you've fallen into the framing device of One Thousand And One Nights.

Luckily that's not the case tonight: storyteller Chirine El Ansary weaves the threads of each tale deftly and the resulting tapestry is one that’s rich in character, lively, with a hint of modern satire.

El Ansary enters the stage speaking Arabic, and throughout switches between Arabic and English to enhance her stories. By offering double translation at some points and leaving the Arabic untranslated later in the story, it creates an immersive sense of emotion: despite not knowing exactly what the characters may be saying, we get a feel for their urgency, fears, determinism.

The story focuses on vengeful kings, lovelorn demons and intelligent slave girls with an emphasis on the tale of Ali Shar and Zumurrud, which means we don’t even touch on the tales of Ali Baba or Aladdin most often associated with One Thousand And One Nights.

We do, however, meet Scheherazade, the ultimate storyteller. In introducing her only later, El Ansary melds her identity as storyteller with Scheherazade’s life-or-death need to keep a narrative going. Scheherazade is master of the cliff hanger, and El Ansary uses this technique in the final instance. How are we to know what happens to Princess Badroulbadour? She invites us to keep reading, to take the stories with us from the theatre.

Louise Jones