As Small Wonder is put to bed for another year, the ever-inventive WordTheatre assembled an all-star cast to read three of Austrian master Stefan Zweig’s short stories.

The cheery sound of massed mandolins piped into the barn invoked the bygone world that inspired Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel, but Zweig’s particular shtick was the unravelling of that carefree innocence.

MyAnna Buring's reading of The Governess was fearless on two counts. It’s an emotionally charged tale in which two young girls discover, by way of eavesdropping, that adults tell lies and babies cause distress and even death.

Buring’s performance was beautifully nuanced, and bold. The treachery of adults who fail to disclose important matters of sex and parentage, and the announcement of suicide, are still the twin vipers that strike at Charleston’s well-upholstered bosom, and a frisson of contained alarm ran through the front rows as Zweig’s dark tale unfolded.

With The Star Above the Forest, read by Matthew Beard, we were back in the mitteleuropa that gave Anderson a lovesick concierge and death by train track, if not life-saving patisserie.

Elegant confections with a heart of darkness. Goodnight, Small Wonder, goodnight.

Four stars