BIKEFACE

Natalie Frijia makes an amiable tour guide.

BikeFace is clean, simple, and it does its job, kind of like a glass of water — or a good bike.

In her solo show, writer/performer Natalie Frijia tells us about her cross-Canada cycling trip. The travelogue includes elements you’d probably anticipate: mishaps (like choosing a really bad camping site), encounters with colourful locals (like the guy who runs a tacky Wild West town), and mosquitoes.

There’s also an undertow of sexual threat: “If you’re a woman and you want to do something,” Frijia says, “this is what you’re told is out there.” But Frijia is resilient: she’s going to have her adventure, goddamn it. And she underlines her feminist point with humour, quoting repeatedly from Dr. A. Shadwell’s 1897 work The Hidden Dangers of Cycling, which includes the gem: “For women, cycling destroys the organs of matrimonial necessity.”

Frijia’s analysis isn’t complicated, but its simple defiance is appealing and she is a personable and — as you might expect — robust narrator.

In The Nest. Remaining performances on September 11 (5:15 p.m.), 12 (10:30 p.m.), 13 (6:45 p.m.), and 15 (1:30 p.m.)

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