Review: Center Rep’s ‘Red Bike’ is liberated writing

Nowhere but America could have created the setting of “Red Bike.” Not long ago, the town was rural. The old bus driver remembers corn and wheat; driving along, he points out a part of town that “used to be happening.” Even now, a lonely water tower stands out on the skyline, and the rest of the world feels impossibly far away. In Caridad Svich’s poetic play, whose Center Repertory Company production opened Tuesday, Feb. 7, luxury condos have sat empty for months, and surveillance drones that buzz like flies swarm over former farm fields. A giant warehouse — not named, but Amazon is strongly implied — is the locus around which work and life revolve, generating the piles of boxes that dominate Kelly James Tighe’s set design. M (Amy Lizardo, left) and A (Adrienne Kaori Walters) in Center Repertory Company’s “Red Bike.” Photo: Alessandra Mello/Center Repertory Company Not naming is a hallmark of Svich’s writing. She doesn’t spell out the evils that have spawned this exurban wasteland, where an adult can work five, six, or nine jobs and still not make ends meet. She trusts that her audiences can function in the world of metaphor and allusion, and she knows that an 11-year-old can see truths to which adults might blind themselves. “Who are these people?” the child wonders of the overseas people who have allegedly bought the empty […]

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