The Magic Bicycle

The Magic Bicycle
First Stage
Jan 16 2011

An original play by John Olive
World Premiere

The reason that this bicycle is magic is because it can travel through time. Interestingly, though, it didn't really seem to travel through space, barring that bicycles can travel through space by means of pedaling. But all of the various places that they traveled to seemed to be more or less the same place.

Since the show spread over several different time periods, they had to illustrate that things were changing. This was done by some minor set changes, but mostly by means of the costumes that the different characters were wearing.

As is true with all First Stage shows, the kids are double cast and we saw the Kaboom cast.

My first thought when I saw the stage was, "gears!" There were so many of them. The floor was covered with three or four huge gears, and there were three or four of them decorating the back wall. The stage was in two different levels, connected by a long sloping ramp, for ease of riding a bike around.
Other than that, the rest of the set was made up from the props that would appear or disappear as the scene called for it. A street sign appeared when our heroes were in "Modern" times. Crates and suitcases appeared and disappeared as needed. Like I said before, most of the scene setting was done by means of changing costumes.

I'm going to get this out of the way; the real star of the show was the title character, the magic bicycle. It was actually more of a tricycle, so that a proper chair could be placed in it, instead of the standard bike seat. The handlebars had to be longer so that the person seated could reach them, but also so that the guidance computer could be mounted between the handlebars. The computer actually looked to me more like a treasure chest had been mounted, with a keyboard inside. They were never oriented so that I could see if the "computer" had a "screen" or not. There was a platform behind the chair with a suitcase on it, and also a board where passengers could sit. (And they did). And the whole thing was decked out in lights. So whenever they would time travel, or "jump", the lights would come down and the bike would be lit up from all its lights.

The pilots of the bike were pretty impressive as well. They had to steer the bike around the stage, and sometimes they made some pretty sharp turns… in the dark. During the talk back, one of the actors said that they practiced with the bike a lot, every day during practice, and then again before each performance.

And just to demonstrate that the bike, indeed, did get top billing, the final bows were great. The two main characters, Willy and Lilah were riding the bike, but they had a fantastic entrance. A door opened at the rear of the stage and they were sitting there on the bike, fantastically backlit.

So that's all I have to say about the bike, now onto the show.

Sometimes it varies if the focus is on the adult actors or the kid actors, and in this show, the focus was more on the kids. With one exception, the adults were there to cause troubles for our heroes, rather than be main characters themselves, which was fine. There were several familiar faces in this cast, Todd Denning and Molly Rhode are in a lot of shows, and they both played several smaller parts in the show.

Todd Denning was rather funny as the Lieutenant in the Civil War era time period. He was getting frustrated as the time travelling heroes kept popping in and out. Upon their first arrival, he said "Not you again!" to some rather confused kids. And at the end, in his last moments onstage in that role, he declared: "If I can't shoot something, I'm leaving!" and he stormed off.
His "underlings" were rather cute, as they appeared to be pretty inept at their job. One thing that I was glad that I caught though, was that one of the soldier's name was "Kellogg", and I happened to know that only three minutes earlier, Willy had packed a box of cornflakes for the trip, in case they got hungry. It was much much later that Willy presented said soldier with the box as a parting gift. I thought that was cute.

Molly Rhode played several roles as well, but my favorite was her first role, as a rich woman who was thinking about adopting Lilah. She was very shocked at what Lilah had to say, shocked that anyone would turn down the offer to be rich. I think that the main reason that I liked this character was her expressions, like when Lilah asked if she would have to wear dead animals if she went to live with the rich woman, who was wearing a fox-muffler at the time.

We also had Flora Cocker playing the headmistress of the orphanage where our story began. She actually a pretty good change from being reasonably nice, to suspiciously nice, to nasty. She seemed concerned about her charges at first, but that was only because if they looked healthy, they could bring a profit in for her. She wasn't in the story very long.

My favorite adult character in the cast, though, was Richard Ganoung, who played Archie - Willy's father and the inventor of the bicycle. He definitely seemed like he was a "cool" dad, although he certainly frustrated Lilah. He had wild hair, which lent itself to his semi-mad scientist character. Although, he was concerned more about Willy than anything else, so he was a good dad. He was also a really big dork, which was awesome. I liked how he would interact with Jedidiah, more on that later.
Another reason that I liked Ganoung was because of one of the things that happened to his character. Because they altered history a little bit, that changed Archie. He changed personality quite a bit, and he demonstrated that very well with his posture, and the voice that he used.

All of the kids in the cast were great as well, so I'm going to say a little bit about each of them.

First off we had the main kids, the time travelers, Willy from modern day time and Lilah from the 1880s. Willy was played by Andres Kilwein-Jennerjohn and I thought he was a perfect, modern, clueless kid. For him, certain things have always been around, like cellphones and the internet and the like, and he was honestly stunned to find out that they didn't have these things in the past. I loved how the first thing he tried to do when he got to the past was call home, and then when he didn't have service, he asked to borrow the phone from some of the other kids. He tried quite hard to get Lilah to adapt to his world, and I could tell that he meant well, but it was a bit clumsy, exactly how one would expect a young teen boy to act.

Lilah was played by Haley Carter. I liked her opening scene as well, as she refused to be adopted by the rich woman. I already mentioned my favorite line, about wearing dead animals, but she had a few other zingers as well that made the adults angry. Lilah is smart though, she knew exactly where the adults kept the money, and helped her two friends, Millie (Abbi Minessale) and Tigg (Thomas Mazza) escape.

Millie and Tigg did not have huge parts, but they were cute. Millie is blind, and I thought that her actress did a good job at acting blind, if that makes sense. Tigg was just cute.

Over the course of their time travels, Lilah met Abigail (Maura Atwood), a pioneer girl. While I did think that this scene was kind of slow, it did serve some plot exposition. Abigail wasn't a big part, but I did like how puzzled she was over the bicycle. Willy meets Thorlaken, a Viking, played by Matt Rudd. To be honest, I'm not sure why Willy met a Viking. Vikings are cool I guess? Despite it being overall kinda silly to have a random Viking in it, I can't fault Matt Rudd's performance at all. He was great - very funny as he would randomly repeat a word after Willy, but shouting it in a battle cry.
"I have to find Lilah!"    "LILAAAAAAAH!"
Before Willy leaves him alone (which was sort of sad, in a way, if you thought too hard about it), he gave Thorlaken a can of coke. He was rather startled by the pop open can, but he loved the drink. I did not get the reference until I did some google research.

Rounding out the cast of the kids, we had Sigrid, played by Maya Georga and Jedidiah, played by Alec Aldred. Sigrid and Jedidiah are Willy and Archie's ancestors. I thought that Sigrid had a tricky bit of maneuvering to do, as she was pretending to be ice skating. But I liked her. Unlike some of the other characters, she wasn't startled by the arrival of the strange looking bike. She was more focused on the ice skating. I liked the skates; they appeared to really be skates, with strips under them so that she could walk better.
The task was to get Jedidiah and Sigrid together, and that was clearly not an easy task. They didn't have a very long scene, but I sort of wish that I could have seen their whole story, it was clearly romantic comedy material. She didn't like him at all at first, but after he helped her up (After crashing into her) she seemed to look at him differently.

Speaking of Jedidiah, he was awesome. Definitely my favorite kid in the cast. He was such a dork, and I mean that in a good way. His first entrance, he is about to be shot by a firing squad, and he just grins and cheerfully greets Willy and Lilah.
I thought it was great fun when Jedidiah and Archie would talk about the bicycle. The two of them were rattling off a lot of mathematical things, but it sounded like they were just tossing out random (real) mathematical terms. That said, they also weren't speaking in complete sentences, and I know what I sound like when I'm discussing math with someone else who knows about the subject. We don't always make sense to listeners either.  I just know that it was very important to factor in the wind resistance.
Jedidiah was eternally cheerful, even when confronted with the gravity of his situation, namely that the army is trying to kill him. He also demonstrated that he had a good memory for numbers and dates, apparently he remembers everything he reads. It made it even funnier when he couldn't remember Lilah and Willy's names later on.
In short, he was one of my favorite characters.

The very end of the show was cute. Lilah finally finds a home with a grown up Millie, and Willy… he puts his goggles back on and rides off to another adventure.

Read on for a quick summary of the plot.

To sum up the plot, in 1888, Lilah and two of her friends, Millie and Tigg are living in a pretty terrible orphanage. The kids steal some money and make a run for it, when they encounter a boy wearing strange clothing on a very odd bicycle. His name is Willy and he is from 2010. (Well, "now"). His father built him this time travelling bicycle, and he's been riding around through time. Lilah asks if she can travel with him, and he reluctantly agrees. They travel forward about twenty years to an important historical event that Willy wanted to witness, the big fire that burned down a good percentage of the city. Lilah thinks that's terrible, and she stops the fire.
They jump back to the present, only to discover that everything has changed. Willy's house looks different, and his family is nowhere to be found. They time travel back again and start the fire, so things go back to normal, except that Willy's father is nowhere to be found.
The computer on the bike started flashing a date in the 1800s, and they obey it, travelling back just in time to see Civil War Era soldiers who greet the kids with "Not you again!" They are going to execute another man, and Willy panics and sends them off to some other random time, 1040. There's no one around, so Willy says they are safe, but Lilah wants to go back and rescue the guy. While the kids are arguing, they are attacked by a Viking, and they run away. Unfortunately, Willy falls off the bike and is left alone with the Viking, who turns out to be friendly.
Lilah goes back to the 1860s where things are still peaceful, and she meets up with a pioneer girl, who she makes friends with. They talk for a bit, and then Lilah follows the directions of the bike to go back to the Civil War era, where she is captured and tossed into a cave with the guy from before, Jedidiah and another man, who is Willy's father, Archie. Archie is trapped and was hoping that Willy would come back and rescue him, but now Willy is lost.
Because Willy is clever, and thanks to the fact that total solar eclipses are rare, and by the lucky chance that there is only one cave in the area, Lilah, Archie and Jedidiah are able to go find Willy. Jedidiah, as it turns out, is Willy's Great-great-etc grandfather, and he's the one that came up with the plans for the time machine. So the gang is kinda stuck in a loop. Archie tells Jedidiah the equations to write down so that later, Archie will know them so he can make the bike, so that he can come tell Jedidiah about the equations… Anyway.
Things aren't over yet though, after they go home, they have to travel back in time again and help Jedidiah fall in love with his future wife, which was quite a funny sequence. Then, after all that, they all go home. Willy back to his father, and Lilah finally finds a home - with a grown up Millie.