"The Village Bike" (through July 13) at the Lucille Lortel Theatre

Scott Shepherd and Greta Gerwig (photo: Matthew Murphy)

"The Village Bike" (through July 13, 2014) at the Lucille Lortel Theatrear

If the best thing about the British import now filling the seats at the Lucille Lortel Theater is the outstanding Off Broadway debut performance of film actress Greta Gerwig (Golden Globe nominee "Frances Ha"), the play by Penelope Skinner  is also worthy of attention. She has a provocative and probing story to tell and dramatizes it effectively, if not with total credibility. "The Village Bike" gives us an almost feminist perspective on marriage, sexuality, pregnancy, libido, infidelity, and pornography, as they are mashed into an amusing but dark comedy.

It will remain for a psychoanalyst and a therapist to explain all the reasons that compel/impel Becky (Gerwig) to given in to her intensified urges to have sex during the early stages of her pregnancy and put her marriage at risk by being not only promiscuous but recklessly aggressive about it. From my perspective, Becky's needs appear to be only partly the result of a hormonal adjustment and a reluctant husband who doesn't want to risk intercourse for fear of hurting the baby. What appears quite obvious is that Becky doesn't want impending motherhood to put a damper on her increased desire for sexual activity no matter what the course or the source..

It appears that husband John (Jason Butler Harner) has suddenly shifted gears from being as sexually available and adventurous as was Becky to being now almost romantically negligent, if not right stupid and insensitive.  Where the two had previously shared a mutual enjoyment of pornographic videos, the collection that has been saved and sent to their new home in the English countryside only remains tantalizing to Becky.

An almost light-hearted  investigation of their once intensely compatible  relationship turns a bit raunchy and risky when Becky turns, during John's  business trips, to others in the quite little village where good neighborliness comes either in the person of Jenny (Cara Seymour), a friendly, chatty doctor's wife with two children, or more meaningfully with sexual gratification from the town's married lothario Oliver (Scott Shepherd) who brings Becky his wife's (also away on business) bike to ride around on during her absence. With the bike in need of repair, Oliver's visits leads to an affair that get messier and kinkier and all consuming by the day and hour. That doesn't prevent Becky from also activating a sexual liaison with Mike (Max Baker) a plumber,  a lonesome widower who has come to fix the leaky pipes. We've heard that joke before.

What makes Becky's bike-propelled adventures interesting and somewhat  courageously beyond the genre of the typically British sex farce (the kind they don't write any more) and the more sophisticated forays into the sexual dalliances of the middle class by the prolific and well-known British playwright Alan Ayckbourne , is the psycho-sexual twist in Becky's agenda once she begins to realize things are getting out of control. Certainly Oliver sees the writing on the wall but possibly a little too late for his own good. Although she has only a miniscule role, Oliver's savvy wife Alice (Lucy Owen) makes a late appearance in the play and with a few lines puts a sharp coda on a play that, under Sam Gold's fine direction, makes us laugh, cringe, and empathize - not a bad thing to happen.

Of special interest is the complicated set design by Laura Jellinek that is unsparing when it comes to making the stage hands earn their keep. The entire set is dismantled and rebuilt during intermission, an arduous undertaking that, from my perspective, is as impractical an exercise in effecting meaningful change as the one that Becky chooses. Looking at the new setting one has to wonder, just like Becky at the end of the play, was it worth the trouble?

"The Village Bike"

Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street

For tickets ($75.00 - $89.00) call  212 - 727 - 7722