Precarious’ second production has an ambitious brief – to explore through performance the existential state of anxiety, to tell a story using archetype and emotion as characters, and to give words to their world by reappropriating some of the more celebrated speeches of Beckett and Shakespeare.

Yet they temper this pretension with some real performance élan. Digital sequences – a window opening, balloons being blown up on the backdrop of a door – form a playful frame to the unwieldy inner metaphorical worlds of the scenes, compensating in their delicacy for the heavy-handedness of the concept. The dance sequences, particularly the exhilarating chorus work to a trip-hoppy score, are performed with panache; the choreography which combines mask work, contact, acrobatic and contemporary dance is diverse and expressive, the aerial and mask work well integrated.

The staging is never short of inventive – a tiny projection dances in a mirror, bodies duet with their own images on projected screens, a rogue white helium balloon ascends suddenly upstage. If you can get beyond the irritation of being preached at to seize the day reiteratively for an hour then there is vision and ambition here to celebrate.