Kathy Maniura @ Pleasance Courtyard
A lycra-clad masterclass in character comedy, Kathy Maniura’s Cycling Man is as much a love story between a man and his bike as it is a razor-sharp satire of fragile masculinity in motion
Set amid the rows of chairs and privacy curtains of an NHS emergency department, Kathy Maniura presents an absurd portrait of Oliver Greaves, a proud (borderline obsessed) member of the Islington Cycling Club, recent crash survivor, and quite possibly concussed.
Dressed in head-to-toe Decathlon chic (with the most aggressively-padded shorts the middle-aged men’s market has to offer) and a still-recording GoPro attached to his helmet, Maniura delivers a show as tight and ridiculous as her character’s massive Lycra bulge.
But beneath the bottom-heavy bravado lies a deeper fixation that no amount of cycling all over Britain (read: Central London and Kent) can resolve: his obsession with his estranged wife, Sarah Greaves. Through notable flashbacks and overblown inspirational storytelling, we learn what Oliver consistently refuses to accept; that Sarah is definitely out of his league.
Conveniently for Oliver, he isn’t alone in his downward spiral. He’s brought with him a projector and Jerome, an unpaid intern and stage manager, to help dramatise his inner turmoil and share his delusions with the other patients – the audience (everyone is stuck in this waiting room).
Moments of fleeting self-awareness are expertly undercut with complete emotional denial through musical interludes recounting the joys of a quarter-zip (and yes, there are repeated nods to Lionel Bart’s Oliver!), as well as obsessive graphs and charts analysing the break-up, and re-examinations of captured GoPro footage.
As a patient, you will be sucked in by the back-to-back unpredictable gags, the gravitational pull of his aforementioned padded Lycra (it's so padded) and hilarious physical comedy sequences that prove Oliver's cycling prowess. Maniura’s absurdly observational creation is drag comedy at its best: unafraid to be stupid and bold enough to show a man who cannot let go of his ego, his wife or his bike.
Kathy Maniura: The Cycling Man, Pleasance Courtyard (Attic), until 24 Aug (not 11, 18), 4.35pm, £9-13