Storytelling is an art form. Some interpret it as reading tales from a book.

Not so.

It is a skill where one performer can become a cast of characters in a host of varying scenarios.

At the wonderfully-compact Playhouse Studio the new season continues with Tayo Aluko and Friends and their latest touring production - Just An Ordinary Lawyer.

Tayo is a former Everyman and Playhouse writer-in-residence who has now written and stars in his second full-length play - which he premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe and is now touring.

He plays Nigerian Tunji Sowande - who became Britain's first black judge - but how did he get there? A baritone singing, enthusiastic, patriotic cricket-lover.

The songs convey a solid strength of purpose as we join Junji's early taste of life and ugly racism in 1950s London.

We shudder with him as he recalls the humiliation at his first job interview where he is told to return to ''Bongo Bongo Land.''

His controlled anger is conveyed brilliantly.

It was the catalyst that led him on to hard-earned success.

A law unto himself.

How do you tell such a tale in 125 minutes?

Accompanied by David Dear on piano and with just atmospheric soundbites of a cricket crowd, a beach and a cold London, bustle he paints endless pictures.

Subtle lighting is also used to perfection.

How can one actor sitting in a chair make you feel like you are in a plane flying over a poverty-stricken Lagos one minute and in a cricket ground the next?

This Liverpool-based storyteller in full flow does.

On a set featuring just an office desk, hat stand (with cap and gown and Nigerian dress) a chair, and a cricket bat we are transported back to the 50s and 60s.

Tunji muses on black liberation from Martin Luther King to Steve Biko.

War-torn, worldwide struggles, the power and the glory of sport to show solidarity.

Director Amanda Huxtable and designer Emma Williams give Mr Aluko plenty of artistic freedom on stage to deliver poetic and descriptive life-changing encounters.

Cricket plays a big part from start to finish but primarily as a clever backdrop as the beautiful finale illustrates.

This is a production with passion, humour, melancholy and above all - hope.

Be prepared to be bowled over.

A compelling history lesson that will knock you for six.

Globe rating: Four stars. Howzat!

Until Saturday.

Box office: 0151 709 4776.