Ride – A New Musical showing at Curve Leicester until Saturday 15th July is wheely wheely good. There ain’t no doubting that folks. It is a dynamic two-hander that is an emotional and physical blast from start to end. At only ninety minutes long and no interval Ride takes the brakes off an epic cycle ride around the world by Annie Londonderry (Liv Andrusier). Martha (Katy Ellis), a secretary friend, is enlisted into the show to help tell the story and populate the stage with some very amusing characters. The two bounce off each other with enormous energy and Andrusier puts in an attractive powerhouse of a performance both physically and vocally.
The studio based piece is extremely well-written by Freya Catrin Smith and Jack Williams and directed with panache and plenty of dramatic surprises by Sarah Meadows. Vitally the show incorporates live music played from behind the set by Sam Young, Frankie South and Alex Maxted. There are twelve songs that, read in order, virtually tell the story. These are The World’s Greatest Story, Ride, The Wager, Across America, On Board, Everybody Loves A Lie, By My Side, The Charmed Existence of Fred Rose, Miles Away From Boston, Stranger, Out Of Time and Ride The Moment. Amy Jane Cook’s clever set and costumes brilliantly and dramatically transport us from venue to venue and there is never a dull moment on stage even in the quietest sections of storytelling.
Andrusier’s Annie Londonderry is adorable yet is far from being a sugar-sweet delicate representation of women of her time. As director Sarah Meadows says in the programme; ‘Annie is difficult, funny and flawed; she embodies the implications of what she had to sacrifice to achieve what she did and the inevitable casualties along the way.’
On stage we get an Annie warts and all and learn not only about the grand and difficult adventure of the cycle ride around the world but about her strong views on diaspora and female liberation and enlightenment. Like in any good drama, there are human challenges and not everything is as you think it is. This is a multi-layered story and all the more fascinating for it. Annie’s character is a complex representation of motherhood and a woman who believed that she could do anything that a man can do in an age where the odds were stacked against such ambition and desires.
Ride is a sure-fire hit with brilliantly acted and expressively sung performances from Liv Andrusier and Katy Ellis and the close proximity of the set in Curve’s studio space gives the audience a chance to really invest in this acclaimed new musical. It’s so good you might even want to see it twice.
