"The Village Bike" at Shotgun Players

OK, now I've seen it, so I can comment. The play is "The Village Bike" by Penelope Skinner, running through June 26, then in repertory for the rest of the year.

Quick Recap

As noted last week, I had read this play more than once a couple of years ago, and wasn't particularly enchanted with it. But director Patrick Dooley insisted that there was something there that I was missing, and that I would appreciate it more when I saw it produced.

I will concede that it's better when performed, but still not going to be a big favorite of mine. That said, many others in the crowd (including my wife) liked it, and some of them liked it a lot.

Summary

Becky is newly pregnant, and though she loves her husband, John, the pregnancy is causing some unanticipated rifts in the relationship. In particular, she's feeling randy, and all he wants to do is read books about babies and set up the nursery. As a result, she starts seeking other partners in the little village they have recently moved to.

There is a lot of sex in this play: Porn, costumes and role-playing, simulated sex on stage, etc. So definitely for an older audience. Leave the kids at home. Also, they are doing a lot of talk-backs after the shows, with the cast and director talking with audience members.

What's Up

There is a lot going on in this play. Elissa Beth Stebbins manages to make more out of Becky's character than I'd felt was there in the text of the play (one of the shortcomings I had noted when I read it). She and Nick Medina as John manage to inhabit the characters quite well, but I have never found their relationship particularly believable. I thought Kevin Clarke's portrayal of Oliver was quite compelling. Indeed, he and his largely-absent-from-the-play wife Alice (played by Megan Trout) seem to be the only ones who actually understand who they are and how their lives work.

A big theme in the play is the different faces/characters/aspects of ourselves we present to different people in our lives. Part of that is about keeping secrets, part is about the separation of one's emotional and physical/sexual selves, and how those might not be satisfied by the same partner. I don't find that story line as fascinating as many others seem to (as evidenced by the discussion in the talk-back). My wife plausibly suggests that this is because I don't have a lot of different faces to my life. I tend to present the same "me" to just about everyone. WYSIWYG, I guess. She compares this aspect of the play to Stew's excellent "Passing Strange," which is an association I hadn't made, but makes some sense.

One of the actors described the play as being kind of a mirror, and all indicated that they have had some real challenges looking into that mirror and dealing with what it reflects back at them.

The Good and The Bad

The performance is very well done. And here is where I probably differ most with the Chronicle's reviewer. She says that doesn't matter, because basically the play shouldn't be performed at all. That is, in my mind, nonsense: You don't dismiss the work of the construction workers who built the Bay Bridge just because you don't care for the design. Their work matters to them and to everyone who uses the bridge. The performers and the performance matter. Presentation of ideas, including those we disagree with or that offend us, are extremely important and socially useful. It is far better to ponder promiscuity, infidelity, deception, sexism, etc., by seeing plays or reading books than by exploring them oneself. At the very least, it can prepare one for what lies ahead, or it might deter one from actually partaking.

I spent a part of the weekend, after seeing the play, with one of my high school teachers, who had led us through reading John Milton's "Areopagitica." One of the passages from that has stuck with me all these years, and it's applicable to this discussion:

Since therefore the knowledge and survay of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human vertue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with lesse danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity then by reading all manner of tractats, and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

 And by the same token, it's the benefit of seeing "too much theater."

I suppose it's possible that there could be a play that is so badly written and so poorly performed that it is not worth staging. But even a bad play, well staged, can be educational. And there is merit, perhaps, in a good play with a flawed performance. The whole point is to get people thinking and talking, to get the material and the ideas out in front of people where they can be examined and evaluated. When we declare that subject matter is so offensive that it ought not be performed, we lose the validation of the ideals we hold dear, or lose the opportunity to remember and share the reasons we object to other notions.

Final Evaluation

So where do I come down on this production? I still think it's a pretty flawed script. I felt there needed to be more back story for Becky and John's life up to now. And I don't find the ending very satisfying. Skinner intentionally leaves it ambiguous. Becky is injured and scared and feeling kind of trapped, which frankly isn't all that different from where she was to start with. Sadder (maybe) but wiser (maybe), and...?

Also, in the talk-back, actor David Sinaiko noted that the script says the play is set in "Middle England," which is a specific socio-economic term that refers to working- and middle-class people outside London. That class distinction seems important to the story, but many of the characters don't actually seem to fit it: John flies off to Amsterdam to film a commercial, Alice is away working for weeks or months at a time, and Jenny, though currently home-bound, is a theoretical astrophysicist. The values, mores, and education of these people seem somewhat at odds with the Middle England description, and I think make the plot less plausible. All these people, save Mike the plumber, seem to have an awful lot of time on their hands for making mischief.

That said, the performances are strong, and particularly compelling on the part of Kevin Clarke. And it seems to be raising issues that resonate with a lot of people, which is a good thing. So I'd say go see it if you think the subject matter is of interest to you. The material doesn't particularly speak to me, but I always find good performances worth watching.