Ben
Brantley

January 10, 2016

Silvia Calderoni must be made of mercury, or some improbably liquid element that has yet to be discovered. Surely no body of mortal flesh could undergo the quicksilver transformations achieved by this remarkable performer in “MDLSX,” a perceptions-scrambling work from the Italian revolutionary theater troupe Motus. It’s not that Ms. Calderoni impersonates different people, as is often the case in one-person shows. She remains, you might say, her singular self, though singular is perhaps the wrong word for someone who truly contains multitudes. As she slithers, writhes and dances through the 80 visually ravishing minutes of the melting memoir of a show that opened on Sunday night at La MaMa Downstairs, Ms. Calderoni makes it impossible for you to pin her down with the automatic adjectives we bring to our appraisal of strangers. Is she beautiful, ugly or plain? Young or old? Passive or aggressive? Seductive or willfully repellent? And, most important to the dialogue this production hopes to set off in your mind, is Silvia Calderoni male or female? That the answers to the these questions are both all and none of the above is very much the point of “MDLSX,” which has been conceived and directed by Daniela Nicolò and Enrico Casagrande, who founded Motus together in 1991.