Bicycle play a bit wobbly at times, but delightful ride is worth your while

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/01/2016 (3553 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

wfpvideo:4703882872001:wfpvideo

The presence of a percussionist playing a bicycle signals a fringe festival feel to Evalyn Parry’s bicycle-centric cabaret Spin at the Prairie Theatre Exchange.

Parry’s work ticks off a lot of fringe-y boxes, much like the Theatre Projects double bill Fraz vs. the Future / Village Ax playing elsewhere in town.

Although Parry is accompanied by three string musicians and the aforementioned percussionist, Spin still has the sensibility of a one-woman show, performed against a video screen projecting an assortment of ephemeral, bicycle-related images. Parry’s sensibility is proudly feminist and radical.

The Toronto-born playwright always intended a flat-out tribute to the two-wheeled bike, but she concentrates on the revolutionary implications of the invention upon the invention of the “Safety” bicycle in the late 19th century. For one thing, the bike necessitated a change in women’s constrictive wardrobes.

Goodbye, corsets and floor-length skirts. Hello, bloomers.

Serving as the hub of Parry’s narrative wheel is one “Annie Londonderry,” a plucky American entrepreneur who contrived a challenge for herself to circumnavigate the globe (at least on land) on a bicycle, leaving her husband and three children behind while she pursued an extraordinary adventure.

Annie is a fascinating example of a woman who used the bicycle to rip away the constraints attached to women before they had the right to vote.

Parry, clearly a lover of wordplay, also illuminates how her heroine used public-relations “spin” to her advantage in funding her incredible adventure, turning herself and her bicycle into a moving billboard as a means of earning the money she needed for her singular project.

It’s a delightful story and through her music, Parry shares her own pleasure at its discovery. She also introduces us the pioneering feminist Frances E. Willard, who learned to ride a bike at the age of 53 and wrote a book on the subject, some of which Parry cheekily puts to music.

At 80 minutes without intermission, Spin’s ride is wobbly at times. While it has been performed across the country, it still feels like a work in progress. That suspicion is confirmed by the last 10 minutes, in which Parry attaches an addendum to her play via an unexpected letter she received from a woman with some insight into an aspect of Parry’s story.

If it feels tacked-on, it is, and it interrupts an otherwise smooth narrative flow. After painstakingly investigating the lives of a few extraordinary women, Parry suddenly focuses on herself (without actually revealing much), to jarring, self-congratulatory effect.

But if you can navigate past that, Spin is still a worthwhile work for its examination of a little-known feminist aspect to bicycle history (mothers, take your daughters), and, yes, for the spectacle of a drummer making beautiful music from a bike.

 

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca