“The theatre is like a dream”, wrote German-speaking Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956). “You go inside, and then a few hours later you emerge again as if from a peculiar slumber.” The author of one of the 20th century’s most singular bodies of work, Walser wrote novels, short stories, brief tales, essays, poems, microscripts and dramolettes, original and provocative plays that turn the traditional notions of fairy tales upside down. As Walter Benjamin pointed out, these small verse dramas appear to begin “where the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales stop”. Snow White forgives the evil queen for attempting to murder her, Cinderella has misgivings about the prince and enjoys being hated by her stepsisters, Sleeping Beauty deplores having been awakened by an absurd, unpretentious Walserian character. After a seven-year hiatus, Nuno Carinhas returns to the Teatro Nacional São João to stage an in-house production and engage with these characters, created by a writer whom Benjamin described as “a thief, a vagabond and a genius”.