Careening Into a Bottomless Vortex
‘The Village Bike’ Stars Greta Gerwig as a Woman Obsessed
Ben Brantley
June 11, 2014: Greta Gerwig turns out to be the perfect person to ride right over the edge of a cliff with. Now don’t say you haven’t been warned. Because over the cliff is where this surprising actress will have taken you by the end of The Village Bike, the genuinely daring new play by Penelope Skinner that opened on Tuesday night at the Lucille Lortel Theater. In this erotic tale of one really hot summer in provincial England, Ms. Gerwig uses the off-balance, open-faced presence she brought to films like Frances Ha and Greenberg to hook us from the moment we set eyes on her. Her character, Becky, a newly pregnant young wife and schoolteacher, seems so graciously clumsy, so endearingly upfront that we’re willing to follow her anywhere. And then, before you know it, there you are, down in the depths of an addiction that eats up identities. And though you probably aren’t feeling too good about Becky — or about yourself — at this point, you have to admit that it’s been a most illuminating journey into darkness.
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