A lot of ground is covered, to increasingly diminishing effect, in “Bike America,” Mike Lew’s play about a young woman’s search for identity on a cross-country bike trip. Although it makes a fairly entertaining journey, this production, by the acclaimed Ma-Yi Theater Company, is ultimately as unfulfilling as its central character’s quixotic quest.
As the play begins, 27-year-old grad student Penny (Jessica DiGiovanni) deserts her long-suffering boyfriend, Todd (a very funny Vandit Bhatt), to join four cyclists on a marathon charity trek.
Riding a cheap bike from Target, she’s hard-pressed to keep up with the others, including gung-ho group leader Ryan (Tom White), the affable Tim Billy (Landon G. Woodson) and a lesbian couple, Rorie (Melanie Nicholls-King) and Annebel (Marilyn Torres), who plan to remarry in every state where that’s possible. Accompanying the group with their gear is their ever-present chaperone, the “Man With the Van” (David Shih).
The restless Penny ignores Todd’s desperate phone calls and tries to hook up with Tim Billy, who likens her leaping on top of him while he’s in his sleeping bag to attempted rape. She’s more successful with Ryan, especially after they do “The Naked Mile” together in a scene that finds them briefly riding in the buff.
The choppily episodic play is very funny at times, especially when the group lands in New York City, where it encounters a pair of “hipster artisanal cheese makers” on Citi Bikes. Elsewhere, their host in Ohio lives up to his swing-state origins by being hopelessly indecisive.
But for all its geographical breadth, the play never really goes anywhere. The vaguely troubled, millennial-generation Penny is never fully defined as a character, although, to be fair, that’s largely the point. More problematically, she’s relentlessly unsympathetic, despite DiGiovanni’s perkily sexy performance.
Penny’s standoffishness cues one of the play’s running jokes. “You’re so emotionally unavailable,” she’s told more than once. “I have to have you.”
Director Moritz von Stuelpnagel keeps things moving at an enjoyably fast pace, having his actors simulate riding by standing behind a bike’s front wheel and handlebars in front of fast-moving photo backdrops of all they pass through. The ensemble, several of whom play multiple roles, mine the material for all its comedic worth. But for all its stabs at profundity, including a forced tragic ending, “Bike America” mostly spins its wheels.