Magical Mystery Detour with Jemma Wilcox

Press photo courtesy Ottawa Fringe.  Gemma Wilcox as The Queen!

Magical Mystery Detour, written and performed by Gemma Wilcox from the UK. Directed by Elizabeth Baron . Wilcox creates a whole fantasy world as she acts out every creature living or otherwise in an adventure that finally has her crossing London and then the countryside, (British no doubt) on her own special form of  Tour (or Detour). Accompanied with background clips from Prince, the Beatles, Madonna, Jimmy Hendrix, Adele, and a lot more, she becomes her truck that comments on life on the road, the Queen who pops up waving at her subjects, her lover (or husband?), a perverse tree, an owl,  her own dog Sola, a fly that buzzes around in the kitchen, a sort of jelly and a yeast spread that was no doubt something English I didn’t catch,  and a whole crowd of unexpected characters and living things that suddenly have their own voices, physical traits, and strange spoken content.  It goes on at a dizzy pace for 60 minutes and Wilcox sustains it all very well. Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to grasp exactly where she is or what she is doing because I found the transitions absent or the vocabulary was British slang I didn’t know but don’t worry about the logic of this one, Jemma Wilcox is a super performer and will hold your attention like a form of wild poetry and you won’t feel the time go by. 

The Magical Mystery Detour plays in the Arts Court Theatre