From the moment it begins, MDLSX is an intensely evocative experience, a visual and sonic assault which fires narrative fragments at the audience and leaves them to put the pieces together. Part one-woman show, part DJ set/dance,the show portrays the experiences of both performer Silvia Calderoni and ‘Cal’, the intersexual protagonist of Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel Middlesex without ever distinguishing between the two, creating a gender-bending dissertation on the nature of identity and expression. Oh, and it’s in Italian.

If it sounds at all dense, that is because it was. For the most part, though, all the disparate elements held together. Calderoni gave a stellar performance: playing a person of ambiguous gender, she was able to impart the full emotional weight and range of her journey towards self-agency. This provided a tangible human centre in the midst of all the abstraction.

Despite this, it was actually the impressionistic elements of MDLSX which worked best. The most memorable moments were all devoid of dialogue, such as one astounding scene where Calderoni tears off her clothes and bisects her genitals with a laser. Abstract imagery and sound are used as psychological punctuation to the events onstage: the genuine home-videos of Calderoni as a gawky child are especially compelling.

Unfortunately, beneath all the interesting effects and disorienting structural choices was a very standard coming-of-age story. The show sidesteps many tropes, only to fall into big gaping ones elsewhere. It regularly hits off pat, overused ‘kid that doesn’t fit in’ beats which at this stage have become such a cultural shorthand that they lose all of their power.

There were superfluous tangents about Warhol, Buñuel and Dionysus. ‘Please, Please, Please’ by The Smiths reared its head once again. Hell, they used the ‘A Real Hero’ song from Drive, at the same structural moment as Drive, for the same emotional drive as Drive. At that point they might as well have played ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ and called it a day.

As well as that, the show frequently slipped into long didactic monologues which served no real purpose. It felt like they perfectly captured their ideas through oblique expression, then tainted it by restating the same ideas directly and artlessly.

With that said, some of the music choices were powerful, and the decision to have Calderoni DJ herself was pretty original.

MDLSX was at the Dublin Fringe Festival from September 15-16, 2017.

Rating: ●●●○○