The train lurches to a halt in a dark tunnel. As the minutes pass you wonder ever so slightly whether the next announcement will see you climbing down onto the dingy track, traipsing along behind your fellow passengers and emerging in a disused tube station, en route to escape… Happily, such an eventuality remains purely imagined for me, but I can’t help feeling that future musings might be influenced by last night’s production of Don’t Stray from the Path at the Old Vic Tunnels.

Theatrically squatting in some old storage space belonging to Network Rail, the first ever Vault Festival has made itself at home in this rabbit warren of tunnels and chambers beneath Waterloo. In Don’t Stray from the Path, performance group The Wonder Club capitalises upon the creative potential of this cavernous underworld. “Pssst… Don’t talk to strangers! Pass it on!” The performers invite us to make the rules and break them as we journey physically and fictionally along with them.

It’s a familiar tale (Red Riding Hood anyone?) but The Wonder Club’s immersive and interactive exploration offers something original in the cannon of reinventions. We arrive in a breathing woodland of gnarled branches, confectionary and dangling creatures. Nothing novel in such a setting, perhaps, except that the attention to detail here is quite remarkable. Delightful quirks include Carrollean ‘read me’ notes growing on trees and suspended boxes in which head-sized holes invite audience members to  surface, gopher-like, into new tiny worlds. With so much to explore, the greatest enjoyment is doubtless reserved for the most adventurous participants, but an alert ensemble ensure that straggling spectators are swept back into the bustle before long.

Playing with and, to a certain extent, deconstructing storytelling devices throughout, The Wonder Club succeeds in avoiding cliché in its appropriation of fairy tale. However, a side-effect of this is a lack of a particularly compelling overall narrative: by the end of the show we’re not quite sure what’s really happened or where we’ve arrived, only that we thoroughly enjoyed the trip. This is promenade theatre for the senses. Take some cake for Granny and a mischievous spirit.