The Village Bike Previews

[WhizzerMarvin TrinaJasonMendel]

I was at the first preview of The Village Bike last night and it was a frustrating, sometimes tedious, sometimes interesting.

Before the play began Sam Gold got up and told us it was the first preview and to be forgiving. Some things weren't finished and they would be serving us free wine at intermission so we could imagine what the finished product looked like.

While meant to be good fun, speeches like this can set an apprehensive mood to the detriment of both of the audience and the actors. It's not like there was a spinning set ready to break down or the actors needed to call for lines. Why set the tone for the evening with, "this could really suck so you're going to need wine to get through it?"

Anyway. Greta Gerwig was one of the big draws for me to see this and she has a huge role, basically never leaving the stage for 2.5 hours. The play is set in a small village in England, and her accent is fine, but I feel like it hampers her warmth from shining through to a certain extent.

The play deals with interesting subject matter, but I wasn't so much a fan of Penelope Skinner's dialogue and by end of the second act I just wanted to jump on stage and start screaming at the characters to stop acting so fvcking stupid!

Gerwig's character is newly pregnant and her husband hasn't had sex with her since she conceived for fear that it might hurt the baby. (Yeah right) He's controlling, but not in scary, abusive way, just in an annoying way, and it's hard to ever see why she fell for this guy in the first place. He's so completely oblivious to any of her needs that I couldn't figure out why they were together.

SPOILERS*********

Gerwig buys a bike from the town outcast and soon enough they are having an affair together. After watching a lot of porn Gerwig wants to experiment sexually with her new lover getting into some S&M/rough roleplay type stuff. She conveniently withholds the fact that she's pregnant from him too.

I feel like we've seen the bored housewife turned sexual deviant so many times before, and this play has nothing on works like Belle de Jour or even originally cast Maggie Gyllenhaal's Secretary.

END SPOILERS*************

The second draw for me was to see Gold's direction, as I admit to being a bit of a fanboy of his work after the brilliance of The Flick and Fun Home. Well, the first act felt very pedestrian and unexciting. He must have been more inspired for the second act because there was a big set change at intermission that vastly improved the staging; he really did some interesting things with entrances/exits and two places existing at once. He also employed so effective projections that got to me. The sound effects during all the scene changes were very cool.

I guess by his own admission Gold knows there's work to be done, but he can't fix the script, which is where almost all the fault lies.

[dave1606]

I saw this last night and am largely in agreement with Whizzer. The play left me very cold.

Almost the entire first half is devoted to cheesy one liners and double entendre's (either re. the bike or the plumbing) not to far off from something heard on Two Broke Girls. By the time we are asked to take the play seriously, we simply don't care.

I don't always need to connect with the characters onstage to enjoy a play, but everyone in this play continues to make very frustrating decisions that make it impossible to feel anything for them.

The second act was definitely better, and I am glad I stayed for it, especially for the few moments of brilliance that Sam Gold provided, but as Whizzer has said, you can only dress a script like this up so much.

Greta Gerwig acquits herself nicely in this, and I hope that she will try her luck at another play more suited towards her talents.

On a side note, she could not have been nicer at the stage door afterwards. I don't know how many people on here are fans of her work, but if you are seeing this and want to meet her I can say that she was an utter delight.

[VernonGersch]

Curious to read other thoughts on the show.

[ClydeBarrow]

I thought this play was pretty bad. The main draw for me was also an opportunity to see Greta Gerwig's stage debut. It was kind of an odd choice for her because while she is on stage for most of the show she never really gets a chance to show her ability due to such a dreadful script.

One of my main issues with the script was the EXTREME over use of double entendre. The play is supposed to be realistic so you never understand why everyone is speaking the way they are about bikes and plumbing. There was a point during the first act where I wanted to scream out "We get it, you're talking about fvcking!" If you're looking for a play with subtlety then this ain't it. The other issue, like Whizzer said, was that everyone acts so damn stupid. I honestly couldn't stand the husband because he was just so whiny and stupid that you never understand what she saw in him in the first place.

The set change during Act 2 annoyed me to no end. I don't see how you can establish the layout of an interior space during the first act to then completely mix it up during the second and think that's ok. The entire "transformation" seemed completely unnecessary when to me they could have just taken the original set, pushed it back and placed the couch for the other cottage in front. The projections were fine if a little bit expected. Probably my favorite part was the "soundtrack" during scene changes.

I can't say that there is much to recommend about this show other than Gerwig herself who deserves a much better role to showcase her talent.