Creators: Haylin Cai, Jamie C Wood and Eloise Poulton
Director: Eloise Poulton
Once you’ve forgiven Haylin Cai for starting her 9pm show 20 minutes late, there’s lots to savour in PsyTreedelic Xperience, an hour-long show about trees. Featuring clowning and some silly songs, Cai’s show is certainly very different and makes children out of us all.
Sometimes it does seem as if 9pm is the wrong time for such a show where members of the audience are selected to go on stage to become seedlings that will grow to trees. Cai persuades the rest of us to make the noises of rain and sunshine to encourage the saplings to thrive. But there is danger too; a hungry deer stalks the forest. Which tree will survive?
Certainly, there’s a children’s show within this – just by removing the odd swear word –, but that would prevent giving adults a rare sense of joy and playfulness, and even if the audience is initially a little hesitant to join in Cai’s games, her generosity and kooky personality will thaw even the most jaded spectator. You can’t help but laugh when she pulls out yet another twig from her capacious emerald-coloured dress with wooden spoons attached.
There’s something akin to legendary performance artist Bobby Baker about Haylin Cai. Baker once instructed adults sitting on children’s chairs in a real school classroom how to make miniature people out of strawberries. And we didn’t doubt her once. Likewise, the audience here at PsyTreedelic Xperience trusts in Cai completely and by the end we are all on our feet swaying in a make-believe breeze and repeating the chant “Grow, forest, grow”. Surprisingly, there’s something indescribably magical about it.
Perhaps such talented clowns are always late to their shows.
Runs until 4 August 2026
Camden Fringe runs until 30 August 2026
