An entertaining but ultimately anticlimactic exploration of female sexuality that gets lost in translation.

Red Stitch Actors Theatre, Melbourne
February 7, 2016

Sex sells, as the saying goes, and this is clearly a maxim that British firebrand-playwright Penelope Skinner has taken to heart. Her breakthrough play, Fucked, was a fastidious, feminist study of carnal desire, and her second big success, Eigengrau, also rooted around the complexities of sexual attraction and emotional manipulation. Her 2011 play, The Village Bike, follows in a similar vein, using sex as a catalyst for a provocative dissection of human interaction, this time focused on subverting antiquated expectations of female sexuality.

Becky (Ella Caldwell) is a married schoolteacher in the early stages of pregnancy. Recently relocated to the countryside with her husband, John (Richard Davies), she finds herself socially isolated and sexually frustrated. Her baby-brained spouse has become myopically fixated on her pregnancy, to the detriment of their sex life, and despite her persistent, porn-assisted advances, John is too focused on prenatal manuals and ethical produce to succumb to her increasingly desperate overtures. The cheeky double entendre of the title refers to a secondhand bike, bought by Becky in an attempt to grasp hold...