Review: The Village Bike

She buys a bike, from someone in the village, and she’s also sleeping around with men from the village. Village Bike. Geddit?

I’m not suggesting that the writing is as blunt as this all the way through Penelope Skinner’s award-winning play, but it is not quite as sharp as it thinks it is.

When it was revealed at London’s Royal Court last year, Skinner’s play won a number of awards – and deservedly so. Some of the writing is very good. Praise also should be given to Sheffield Theatres for landing the regional premiere of the show when a number of theatres must have been similarly eager to have it.

The plaudits don’t stop there – this is a thoroughly brilliantly acted play. Some of the characters around the central role of Becky veer towards caricature, but Amy Cudden, as Becky, is a rock solid centre around which the rest of the cast can flow. The problem is that it all seems so small town – literally, middle class and inconsequential.

It’s not that theatre has to be about gritty working class tropes, but when the concerns of the central characters are around the pipes of their country home and shopping as ethically as they can, it’s hard to invest. The Village Bike is actually about pregnant Becky, desperate to be seen as a woman by her husband and not an oven for their baby, and how she finds sexual gratification in the arms of other men. It features sex scenes and masturbation, and they contrast with the middle class milieu, but it seems almost designed to shock simply by virtue of being seen in such a boring environment.

To October 6.