Meeting at the Tivoli, then being told we were going to a secret location created mystery right from the get-go.

We were escorted to a high rise building in King Street, hopped in the elevator and went to the top floor where the doors opened to a pathway of gorgeous lights directing us to be seated on a rooftop.

The cityscape in its illumination is beautiful and creates and atmosphere of intrigue for what’s to come.

In front stood a single table and chair lit up mysteriously, and holding a computer, microphone and mixing equipment.

Moments later Thomas Dudkiewicz appeared and was seated.

Didkiewicz begins by putting up one finger, signalling something is about to begin and stares me straight in the eyes for what seems like an uncomfortable amount of time.

“It was a dark and lonely night”……….

His enigmatic voice begins, and with the lights beaming down on him and the surround sound speaker system emanating out the sound of raindrops and rushing winds, so realistic you can almost feel it on your skin, we are transported into his imaginative world of storytelling.

He brings alive his fascinating characters’ personalities, differentiating clearly between them with his incredible voices and emotive facial expressions morphing backwards and forwards between them so cleverly.

The stories are so unpredictable, somewhat dark and intriguing that you are on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next and it’s not what you are prepared for.

At the heart of each story is something more powerful and thought-provoking than just entertainment and all are linked by the common thread of family experiences including love, loss and complicated things in-between.

This one man show was brilliant and an event to be remembered.

I left feeling like a child who wanted ……….just one more story!

Storytelling has made me a living – I love to create a narrative and ask others to embrace it and become immersed within it.

Bedtimes Stories was positioned as a live radio play, in a secret location.

I was excited at the thought of a dark smelly corner of a car park, where I would be taken on an ambling vocal journey to a new place, a new reality.

I was teased and tempted to enter a dreamscape.

Instead, what I got was a rambling, at times confused and incoherent, piece of self-expression.

This exhibition didn’t need a live audience.

I am a radio man, I love the connection of the medium to an individual and when I closed my eyes I could have been in the comfort of my lounge, listening to this collection of dark, Grimm-like fables, told in a variety of guises and characters.

Dutch actor Thomas Dudkiewicz attempts to guide us through a series of twisted tales, augmented by some clever audio wizardry, where we are encouraged to become a part of the story.

A rich soundscape, some fantastic technology and a playful stare set up what was to be a familial journey of storytelling.

But I wasn’t.

I was on an uncomfortable plastic chair in a secret location listening to a soundscape of self-congratulation.

Don’t get me wrong – Dudkiewicz is superbly talented but I was more interested in the lives going on in the apartment building across the way.

This could have been both powerful and engaging.

It was neither.

The hour-long show was a confused panoply of unsure characters, awkwardly lurching toward an end I was wishing had come sooner.

Its intention is clear, but in my experience, the execution is not.

I remember once my university lecturer said, “…sometimes the image the imagination conjures up is ten times more powerful than anything we can put on stage.”

URLAND’s Bedtime Stories certainly affirms this ideology.

The performance can be described as a radio play or, perhaps more fittingly, as a dark, disturbed version of Play School (Thomas Dudkiewicz does give the impression of an off-key children’s presenter, gazing slightly too intently at the audience as they find their seats).

If you’re anything like me, once you realise the audio is the main event of this show, the scepticism grows.

A one-man show, a one-man radio show?

But I must encourage you to surrender your disbelief.

Allow yourself to be enveloped by Dudkiewicz and his voice and the vast array of definitive characters this one man portrays.

Be enveloped by the evocative soundscape projected through a 360-degree surround sound system, the grumbling of thunder, the spitting of gunfire, the rattling of a hospital gurney upon a linoleum floor.

And you will find it is rather easy to be immersed in this narrative.

The narrative itself is so much more than the title implies.

On the surface, it is a coming of age story.

Lily listens to tales told by her father, Max and her grandfather, George.

Her responses and questions mature as she does.

Bedtime Stories has the texture of a children’s story but there are moments within that are incredibly dark.

Too dark for a young girl like Lily.

Because the stories aren’t for Lily at all.

They are for Max.

Max who feels so alien in this world. Max who struggles to communicate with his wife, his daughter, his father. Max who desires to make sense of the world and so he tells stories.

“It was a dark and lonesome night…”

With this foreboding line and some audio-visual trickery, performer/storyteller Thomas Dudkiewicz cracked the spine on a metaphorical book of unsettling and – at times – scattered stories.

Bedtime Stories is a series of stories, within stories, possibly wrapped within another layer of stories.

Think of it as the radio play equivalent of Inception.

Visually, there’s not much there.

Dudkiewicz sits at a microphone on a raised platform, a laptop and control board before him.

Aurally is where the performance piece shines.

Dudkiewicz’s ability to snap between characters: father Max, daughter Lily, grandpa George and more, with a change in voice and a tweaking of audio effects was captivating, as was the positioning and use of surround sound speakers to attempt an immersive sound experience.

I say “attempt” because I felt the venue – an expansive and exposed rooftop in Bowen Hills – was not the best choice for a play that required sustained intrigue and intimacy to really make an impact.

Lights flicking on and off in nearby apartments distracted me, noises from nearby restaurants and streets drew my attention away from the story and a chilly breeze also detracted from my experience of the unusual and thought-provoking piece.

Perhaps a smaller, enclosed space would have made a more fitting reading room.

I sent a text about the evening of Bedtime Stories to a friend and tried to describe what my experience had been.

It read something along the lines of “wine, words on a rooftop…and a blanket” which is what my experience was, but I’m still struggling to find the right words to really describe one of the greatest and most unusual live performance experiences I’ve had.

If it read like a bedtime story, it would start something like “On a moonlit and mild September night…” and it would describe a group of strangers being led from a stunning hundred-year-old building across the streets of Brisbane to the dimly lit rooftop of a much younger concrete building, wrapping themselves in comforting polyester and listening; to voice, sound effects and the hum of the city while being taken on the most fascinating journey of bedtime mystery adventures.

Part suspense, part sweet, part fun, part frightening; Thomas Dudkiewicz manages to sit at a desk and with just his voice and some audio technology, creates a story within a story, within a story; a melding of life, love, death and everything in between.

Let me say, I’m still trying to figure out what went on in said story, but I do know at times I had to check if it was raining or if the sound effects were playing with my ears and I’m still not sure if someone in Bowen Hills owns a noisy dog or was the barking part of Thomas’ master plan?

I’ll never know but I left feeling like I didn’t want it to end, I’m still thinking about it 24 hours later and I’d happily sit amongst the skyline and listen to it over and over again…while everyone lives happily ever after.

But do they?