“Wel­come to the Desert of the Real,” mut­tered Lau­rence Fish­burne in 1999, prof­fer­ing a pill-tot­ing hand to lead us through the impend­ing escha­ton. Anoth­er decade, anoth­er loom­ing onto­log­i­cal sin­gu­lar­i­ty, and whose palm are we to grasp? A glance down Courte­nay Place offers the obvi­ous answer: beck­on­ing on the thresh­old, a tow­er­ing Gan­dalf with more storeys than sto­ries, uncan­ny-val­ley sheen out­gleam­ing even Auck­land’s noto­ri­ous fin­ger-wag­gling San­ta Claus. There and back again indeed.

Mean­while, cat­ty-cor­ner to McKel­lan’s beck­on­ing hole, a rather cat­ti­er but per­haps more unex­pect­ed jour­ney is already unfold­ing Down­stage: the quixot­ic quest of the intre­pid Richard Meros (here tak­ing the form of famil­iar sur­ro­gate Arthur Meek) into New Zealand’s mythol­o­gized heart­land in search of that most elu­sive nation­al trea­sure, the South­ern Man. And with the apoc­a­lypse once again breath­ing down our necks — no more mon­ey, no more room, no more envi­ron­ment and pre­cious lit­tle time — sure­ly someone’s got to extend a crag­gy hand. With all our wiz­ened old men­tors dead, dying or test­ing their wel­come, Meros’ quar­ry may be our last best hope.

In Tibet, they ven­er­ate their Old Men of the Moun­tains, scalps pre­served in rar­efied monastery air await­ing DNA ver­i­fi­ca­tion; for traces of Meros’ even more elu­sive fig­ure, you’d be bet­ter off hol­ing up under the Film Archive with tapes of Crumpy’s old Hilux com­mer­cials. But Meros, two strikes down — not Helen Clark’s lover, still as male as ever — has noth­ing but time to his name, so it’s off Down South and into the Ota­go hills in search of the South­ern Man. A pseu­do­nym trudg­ing rebrand­ed (mid­dle) earth in search of a myth: the desert of the real, indeed. Even if this one’s stud­ded with sage­brush and nev­er too far from a Speight’s back­drop.

When Guy Bal­lard went into the desert and up the moun­tain, he returned with pub­lish­ing clout and a fledg­ling belief sys­tem; Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky took audi­ences to the sum­mit and left them with a mul­ti-disc box set. It’s these footholds which Meros grasps in his own ascent, but his boon is as con­tem­porar­i­ly con­crete as Moses’ own gran­ite post-its: not just the Pow­er­Point to end all Pow­er­s­Point, but a Pow­er­Point so end­less­ly inven­tive it might just jus­ti­fy the trip.

For buried with­in this Pan­do­ra’s .Ppt are boun­ties lim­it­less. Here is South­ern Man as a loom­ing colos­sus to dwarf Her­cules or Gil­gamesh; here the Enkidu of the Swan­dri grasps in a weath­ered hand the reins of world­ly renew­al, would he but flick a wrist and set the bug­ger to gal­lop­ing. Here Olym­pus stands with Dau­mal’s Mount Ana­logue and Petrar­ch’s Mont Ven­toux as just one more Bas­tard ripe for the Knock­ing-Off.

Fish­burne and McKel­lan’s men­tor-fig­ures have shown their true stature long ago: cor­ralled into end­less dances of dimin­ish­ing returns, they pon­tif­i­cate emp­ti­ly on the world’s LARGEST TURBO XXXTREME-SCREENS along­side the Dum­b­le­dores and Obis-Wan and mis­cel­la­neous Antho­ny Hop­kins after­thoughts. And mean­while Meros’ wiz­ened gate­keep­er — too large for the screen, too hard for the world, too rough even for South­ern plains planed chem­i­cal-peel smooth for their close­up — shiv­ers in the dark night of all our souls, pulling one more dog close as the embers of his bon­fire glim­mer in the time­less Ota­go dream­time.

Richard Meros Salutes the South­ern Man, at Down­stage until 1 Dec