The Psychic review

She succeeds in summoning someone from her own past, however, as her young relative Tara appears in her dressing room, wanting to learn the tricks for herself. Reviewers have been sworn to protect the tricks of Dyson and Nyman’s own show, yet this suggests there are more shocks in store than the production actually conjures up.

After slowly cranking up the tension for a fun first-act finale set at a seance, the flabbier second half becomes a bit hammy. As a thrill ride, the show takes the scenic route with several detours and diversions. With too many elements and ideas in the mix, however, it lands between two worlds: a family drama about guilt and grief, with a handful of slightly underwhelming and repetitive scares. The human desperation for contact in the wake of loss also never feels as moving as it should.

The real illusionist here is designer Rae Smith. Her brilliantly hallucinatory set constantly warps and distorts our perspective with strangely angled rooms and three-dimensional spaces printed on two-dimensional flat walls. The stage is also permanently framed by stage bulbs, questioning whether it’s all an act.

Walsh’s Sheila is a fierce glamour puss in a hot-pink blazer and stilettos, snarling as though a panther as she bitterly plots her comeback. She’s matched by a riotously entertaining and witchy Frances Barber as her mother, who’s like a malevolent spirit, each line delivered with the sonority of a cursed incantation, with the pair gamely leaning into the show’s occasional corniness.

Like a fortune teller hedging their bets, Dyson and Nyman throw out questions about credibility – heavily teasing the question of whether the psychic’s powers are real or phoney – that are left unsatisfyingly open. They seem to forget that, for audiences, seeing is believing; ambiguity can just leave you a sceptic.

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