It took 74 years for Liverpool Anglican Cathedral to be completed, versus a mere 18 months of preparation to realise dreamthinkspeak’s site-specific, multimedia response to it. Yet this carefully wrought, peripatetic performance by the Brighton-based theatre company is an indelible experience. Presented in celebration of the city’s status as 2008 European Capital of Culture, One Step Forward, One Step Back is a tribute to a magnificent building and a marvellous meditation on the modern metropolis in which it sits.

Founded a decade ago by the director and designer Tristan Sharps, dreamthinkspeak specialises in productions that draw out the poetry of settings or pieces of architecture. Here, Sharps and local partners, including the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, have trained their sights on Europe’s second-largest Anglican house of worship.

The cathedral is the evening’s main protagonist, with additional inspiration from Dante’s Divine Comedy, William Blake’s poem Milton and Milton’s Paradise Lost. But this is no high-brow literary event. Better to think of it as a journey of discovery that, in its cunning, playful use of proximity, distance and scale, might lead you to ponder your own definitions of past and present, Heaven and Hell.

Audience members are admitted into the cathedral at timed intervals, then are free to proceed at their own pace. (There is a lot of walking through narrow corridors and up and down stairs, so wear sensible shoes.) Our first encounter is with a man in period garb worriedly poring over a pile of musty books. Suddenly overhead appears a film of people seen from below in contemporary clothes, pushing shopping trolleys. From there we meet more anxious bibliophiles, perplexed consumers plus a handful of harried Santa Clauses clicking away at computer screens. We also pass miniature representations of anonymous tower blocks, some starry and alphabetised nocturnal skies and a couple of chilly but wondrous, snow-covered mountainsides.

Part of the magic of One Step is that those who created it never dictate what to think or feel, but instead rely on our openness to its ever-shifting perspectives and our ability to make associations between the stimuli they provide. In one unforgettably vertiginous moment we emerge unexpectedly high above the darkened nave, to gaze far down upon a saintly, slow-moving woman in a pale robe who turns and raises her arm until the brilliant shaft of light in which she is caught fades. There is also a chance to linger atop the cathedral tower where both a 360-degree panorama of the toy-like city and a sensational telescopic surprise await us. The performance takes about an hour, but in terms of impact and resonance it is transforming and timeless.

Ends Saturday May 10. Box office: 0844 8000400. www.liverpool08.com

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