Be transported with The Year of the Bicycle

An instantaneous resounding applause and standing ovation. What more needs to be said? The Year of the Bicycle is good and the people know it. They feel it.

I will say more, though. It’s not difficult to explain why it’s good…

Quick context: 1997: Andile (Aphiwe Livi) is “8 years old” and his favourite subjects “are all the subjects”. His grandmother is a domestic worker in Hout Bay. Playing there one day, he accidentally kicks his ball into the neighbour’s garden. Only child Amelia (Amy Wilson), also 8, can’t find the ball but insists he should return the following day to ride on her bicycle she got for Christmas. A friendship blossoms.

Neither are concerned with, nor even seem to notice their difference in ‘privilege’. Andile is only concerned that the boys will laugh at him for “playing with a girl”. Amelia describes that only the white children can also go to the horse school – but she doesn’t really know why…

A story like this runs the risk of being sentimental. But all I saw were two kids having fun together, aware of but unfazed by the worlds that separate them. All that matters is the world they create that brings them together. But they are kids too, they’re spiteful sometimes. These rough, hurtful moments keep sentimentality at bay.

The plot is complexly arranged and intriguing. Andile lights beacons throughout his life, represented by the solar lights on stage. These memories keep him rooted when he finds his “body is broken”. Amelia’s body is broken too, after a bicycle accident, but her “mind is still working”. In this state, Andile tries to get through to Amelia, but she doesn’t “want to wake up”, she won’t acknowledge him, the true situation of his life. Switching off, staying removed is easier for her.

A fishbowl, used as a terrarium, contains the world they know. Amelia explains where everyone lives: the whites this side, the blacks here, and the coloureds by the sea so they can catch their fish. Her “mom gets headaches” from the political unrest and violence “on the black side” – she fears the civil war, the uprising, that many whites feared would happen post-1994 (some still await it), the one which never happened. Living in a fishbowl…

A cardboard “baby brother” is what eventually disrupts their friendship. They argue over him, she wants to cut him in half, but “like the Solomon story” Andile wants to keep him whole – “she’s already got everything, why does she want baby brother too?”  But, baby brother “won’t be safe” at Andile’s house, Amelia says. She wants the best of both worlds. The cracks start to form, the mutual judgements on each other’s social standing appear… From what outsiders have said to their young minds? Or is it inevitable that people from ‘opposite sides’ can never be true friends?

Their imagination games bond them in their youth. Later in life a series of terrible events lands both youngsters, now 18, in a sorry state of isolation. Somehow, their bond is rekindled, within the confines of their minds.

Livi and Wilson, directed by Joanna Evans, create a wonderfully different world. They dance with a bicycle wheel, indulge each other’s bad bollamakiesies and overplayed airplane crash scene, and forgive easily so their happy play times can continue. These crafted details, viewing South Africa’s tense transformation, through children’s innocently perceptive eyes, makes for a superb, moving, haunting piece of theatre. – Sarah Roberson

The Year of the Bicycle is on today (03/10) @ 1.05pm @ City Hall. Click here for production info.