Ride – Vault Festival

Ride at the Vault Festival, London

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Incredibly, the story of Annie Londonderry’s cycle ride around the world in 1894/95 seems to be true. She died in obscurity in 1947 but her great nephew published a book about her in 2007. Ride, at the Vaults Festival, presented by Bottle Cap Theatre Company, is the latest version of Annie’s story.

Bottle Cap’s founders are this show’s writers, Freya Smith and Jack Williams. Together they are credited with book, music and lyrics for the show and Smith directs with Adam Lenson as associate director and dramaturg. There is also a movement director, Alfred Taylor Gaunt, and this show is full of physical energy despite the small space it features in at the Vaults. There is no bicycle actually on stage, but it certainly feels like there is.

Bottle Cap aims to make musical theatre that is accessible to people who don’t think it’s for them by (amongst other things) making work with music, dialogue and characters that feels contemporary and is entertaining. This is certainly the case here.

Annie Cohen Kopchovsky or Annie Londonderry as she comes to be known, portrayed by Amy Parker in this show, is an amazing woman. She drives herself – and the show – relentlessly and the result is exhilarating. Amy – and indeed Annie – is onstage – and singing – throughout with just one other character who is variously the retiring Martha who works in the office where Annie is telling her story, and the reluctant Celine who Annie meets on her arrival in France. The second performer, Amelia Gabriel, also delivers a great performance and, finally, takes over the telling Annie’s story when Annie herself collapses in a heap from her exertions.

Smith and Williams are also onstage in the four-piece band who sit in a circle together. Williams is credited as MD but it is Smith, on keyboards, who is in visual contact with the two singers. She can see them, but I don’t think they could can see her.

The piece is nevertheless very tight musically and this is surely down to excellent musicianship, a small venue and a great quality of attention from all concerned. Williams plays guitar with James Pugliese on bass, both of whom sit with their backs to the action. Tim Harvey on drums can also see what is going on.

Apparently, Annie left a family to cycle away to fame and fortune. The challenges she faced were both physical and emotional. There was a bicycle craze in the 1890s but nevertheless to cycle round the world – or at least to travel round the world with a bicycle as a lone woman – was an extraordinary feat. Annie set out in a long skirt and a corset apparently but gradually changed into leaner (male) cycling apparel.

Despite having a real and amazing story to tell, as Smith says, Annie was slippery, she was creative, she spun contradictory stories to journalists. “To her facts were negligible; story was everything.” Annie’s character and her complexity comes determinedly to the fore in this version of her story and the music of the show certainly drives this.

This is not only a piece celebrating her achievements and it’s well worth seeing. Annie, her story, and this musical theatre version of it are certainly wild and I very much hope that she – and this show – gets to ride on…

Clare Walters