Fringe review: PSYCHOPOMP
Part-seance, part-soliloquy, PSYCHOPOMP depicts a woman grappling with forces outside this realm, cutting to our anxious cores. ★★★★
I can only count on one hand the number of times I have been taunted by the God Between Life and Death. Thankfully, consummate South Australian theatre-maker Poppy Mee is doing much of the leg work for us, pulling herself back into the intermediate void each night with PSYCHOPOMP.
Seated in at The Mill — one of Adelaide’s more contemplative arts venues — Mee has asked us to carry some offerings from the entrance in the hope that they might be the catalyst for the oncoming ritual. Summoning an interdimensional deity is thirsty work, after all; Cheetos, a hand towel, grapes, and a bottle of sparkling water all might provoke tonight’s experience.
PSYCHOPOMP was developed through The Mill’s 2024 Centre Stage Residency, and features Mee as writer/performer with direction by Temeka Lawlor, and sound design by Dan Thorpe. Poppy Mee’s movement is exacting throughout, with her alternating between her and the deity character at times as subtle as a change in stance.
There’s an air to PSYCHOPOMP of the performance artists of the 70s, a splash of Antonin Artaud’s Theatre and its Double, and some clown on the side. The play is laced with evocative jazz and avant-garde music throughout, and the various sequences of movement have a distinct sense of humour that charm us with descriptive tales of this deity’s journey through the earthly pleasures.
As this game plays out between the God Between Life and Death and Poppy Mee, we start to observe a quiet truthfulness under the theatrics. This ongoing struggle Mee’s character faces as to whether to give herself over to the ‘cataloguer of memories’ has a Shakespearean quality, and it’s something anyone who’s ever experienced mental health defeats will recognise.
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At the conclusion of PSYCHOPOMP, we are no less certain about the path best taken. However, we know that it might be worth staving off those chroniclers of our being for a little while longer.
PSYCHOPOMP continues at The Mill, Angas St until March 16
Read more 2025 Adelaide Fringe coverage here on InReview