Richard David & Ella Caldwell in The Village Bike; Photo by Jodie Hutchinson.
Red Stitch Actors Theatre presents The Village Bike, written by Penelope Skinner and directed by ensemble member Ngaire Dawn Fair. It is well worth seeing – it’s funny, rude, well-constructed and astute, and ​confirms the award-wining playwright’s reputation as British theatre’s leading young feminist writer.
Can women fuck without getting emotionally involved? Can one person give you all you need in a relationship? Can you have both passion and cosy secure companionship once you cohabit? We live in a world wedded to the heteronormative monogamous model, a one size-fits-all paradigm which is sadly failing these characters. Those eternally fascinating questions are examined by The Village Bike in a funny, provocative and accessible script.
Ella Caldwell plays Becky in a vital and intense performance. You come to care for her. Becky is newly pregnant and being fussed over by irritating husband John (Richard Davies) who no longer wants sex. Every time Becky tells John what a good man he is, you can hear the frustration in her voice. John has positioned Becky as a victim of pregnancy hormones and is irrationally afraid that any kind of sex will damage the fetus. Her libido, however, is rampant.
Watching ‘highwayman porn’ doesn’t help, especially when a real life highwayman turns up on her doorstep. But it’s actually local married bad man, Oliver (Matt Dyktynksi), dressed for a repertory production of Dick Turpin, and happy to provide a solution to Becky’s dilemma. The cast is having a great time with this tale of bucolic adultery and a woman’s changing identity. Dyktynksi nails his character, a sexy mongrel with a questionable attitude towards women, beautifully, enigmatic at first and slowly revealing more of himself as the play unfolds. The lack of PC here is almost transgressive.
The local plumber, Mike, is the epitome of a lonely aging man. I loved Natasha Herbert’s practically-sole mother, distracted and stretched to her limits by exhaustion and misreading conversations – those of us who’ve been there know just what she’s going through. The lead, Caldwell, is fantastic; direction is strong, and good use is made of the entrances and exits, of the surprises and reveals, and of the underlying preoccupations carried by each character; with all the best intentions none of them is able to really care for or to see each other clearly; the play is almost Chekhovian in this respect. Best of all, The Village Bike lets a powerfully feminist story tell itself.
The play’s set in England but the cast keep their Aussie accents. It might have been judicious to make a few changes to the script and make it local, only cos I was distracted for a minute at first by thinking ‘Oh, they’re Aussies living in the UK’, but then when I heard everyone’s natural accents I thought ‘Oh, they’re – No matter.’ You don’t want to be taken out of the story for any reason, however briefly.
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5
The Village Bike
by Penelope Skinner
Cast: Ella Caldwell, Richard Davies, Natasha Herbert, Syd Brisbane, Matt Dyktynski, Olga Makeeva
