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Gemma Wilcox is a terrific performer, with a soft, graceful, gentle quality that’s very appealing. She wrote Menage à Dix, The Honeymoon Period Is Officially Over and Leela¹s Wheel, the three pieces she’s now starring in at Buntport Theater; she plays several characters — male and female, young and old — in each, as well as birds, fish and animals. She does this with great skill, simply changing body position or circling on the stage as she moves from one role to another, and the transitions are so clean that you can tell instantly when she’s no longer Sarah, for instance, and has transformed into Michael. Or Crystal or Peter.
Menage a Dix, the strongest of the three plays, concerns a young girl, Sarah, and her mother on vacation in Mauritius some time after the death of Sarah’s father. Sarah meets a working-class young man, Pete, who takes her diving; her mother slowly begins to recover some joy in life. What elevates Menage beyond a sweet-natured but not particularly original slice of life is the moment when Wilcox becomes the leader of the school of fish that Sarah’s observing, leading the other fish in flittering, glittering circles: It’s lovely and surprising. There’s also an appearance by the dodo — the hapless, flightless bird that greeted the island’s first human visitors without fear and was rewarded by being wiped off the evolutionary map.
Honeymoon shows Sarah a few years later, in a marriage to the upper-class Michael that’s already becoming problematic, listening to advice from her happily married aunt and uncle who live on a farm. In Leela’s Wheel — with the help of a cat, a hamster and a visit from Pete — the marriage comes to an end.
But for all Wilcox’s skill with accents and characterization and her charm as a performer, the evening doesn’t quite stand up. There’s something too ordinary and also too sentimental about the material. The plays lack urgency and momentum; the language remains commonplace throughout, with people saying things like “What’s happened to us?” and “What does your heart say?”
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Still, you might want to go, if only for the glorious moment when — utilizing the simplest and most minimal movements — Wilcox becomes a peacock. The evening runs through January 28 at Buntport, 717 Lipan Street; for information, call 720-212-5001.
