How appropriately discombobulating it is, in this city founded by dour Presbyterian Scots, to have to push through a drunken crowd of St Patrick’s Day revellers in lurid green leprechaun hats, and descend to the grim underground of NAT’s Knockabout Studio, in order to experience the magic of Irish storytelling at its spell-binding best. Christopher Sainton-Clark is about to take us on an exhilarating journey that will make the carousing in the Octagon above us seem dull indeed.

The rough deconstructed space is perfect for the thrilling opening: panicked breathing, a man on his knees, in mud, with a gun against his head. The moment when life is supposed to flash before the eyes. Nathan’s life however, is literally flashing by – with each dawn he has lost a year and a day, thus in two months all those he knows will be gone: beloved wife, best friend, parents, enemies. Even Ireland itself will be lost to him. 

The Time Traveller’s Wife, Benjamin Button, The Time Machine, Outlander – we have always been fascinated by the dramatic possibilities in subverting our concept of time, but A Year and a Day is a new and intriguing take. It is performed as a solo by Sainton-Clark, scripted from his own series of grisly “rhyming bedtime stories for adults”, The Book at the End of the Shelf.

Nathan is not, he tells us, a time-traveller in the traditional sense – “more like stuck in a tornado”. The actor’s energy is such that we too are whirled along in that tornado, forced to concentrate to follow the swift changes of character, the breathless pace of an exciting narrative which includes courageously brutal stage fights. That this is not difficult is due to the consummate skill of Sainton-Clark, his economical delineation of character, neat transitions, and impeccable mime. 

The story is utterly engrossing, even terrifying in parts, as Nathan has run afoul of very dangerous men and the threat of violence is ever-present, but it is the people in his life that touch me, from his bitterly pathetic father to the bewildered wife he adores and the friend Sam whose life he destroys. Each in turn is brought to life by the actor with a fine combination of proficiency, humour and tenderness.

Nathan is obliged to rush a process of maturing that normally takes years, as he tries to solve the problems his disappearances cause for those he loves, and perhaps more significantly, is forced to see himself more clearly and accept responsibility for the mistakes he has made. Although he is flawed, Sainton-Clark endows him with a charm that persuades us to sympathise with him.

The language is a pleasure to listen to, so natural in its rhythms that it is not until (after a particularly curt line from Sam) Nathan tosses us an irritated aside – “Disregarding that this play is meant to be in rhyme” – that I fully register it is in fact verse. Lovely. 

The lighting and gentle sound effects support the production in the same understated way. Director Rosanna Mallinson has wisely allowed the master storyteller to command the bare stage with minimum interference, and the result is a triumph, an immensely satisfying hour in its simplicity of the best theatre has to offer. A Year and a Day is a finely-crafted reminder to make the most of time. To think we could have wasted that hour up above, knocking back Guinness while bellowing Whiskey in the Jar!

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