Why is a buxom German woman leading a violent women’s suffrage campaign in turn-of-the-century New Haven? How can three bikes and a flying apparatus successfully share a playing space smaller than most dressing rooms? And how, God, can Joseph P. Cermatori DRA ’08 deliver his musical maternal admonishment several octaves above middle C?

“Bicycling for Ladies” — a wacky combination of familiar and fantastic parts — does little to answer these questions. When Angela first arrives in New Haven with her journalist husband Bert, she is hopelessly bored in her role as stay-at-home wife. Her attitude changes when spunky gal friend Frances gives her a bicycle and she starts gallivanting around the city with her friends in the Ladies’ Revolutionary Cycling Society, working up a sweat and advocating women’s suffrage.

For the record, it is worth going to see any Yale Cabaret show for the sheer coolness of the graduate theater scene. Besides the fabulous ambiance of the playing space — a dimly lit room with high, dark, wooden tables made all the more poetic by this musical’s background of live piano music — all aspects of the productions are the passionate experimentations of up-and-coming School of Drama students. In this show especially, it feels as though both the script, with its references to Yale and New Haven, and the innovative staging have been created with this venue in mind. The most impressive example of creative use of limited space comes in the opening scene of the show. It features Angie riding her bicycle through the audience down the center aisle, a crash, and then her slow float back to stage, suspended and moving with a cable system, singing an eerie soprano melody as her husband and friend reach for her.

The show then takes on a completely different tone as ladies wearing bloomers and straw hats lead a rousing musical number praising the thriving industry of New Haven, where “almost everything gets its start.” Before the audience can feel too estranged by that classification, Frances proclaims the timeless fact that “on Whalley or Dixwell the Yalies don’t mix well.”

The plot progresses in a series of dialogues and musical numbers that often have funny lyrics but tend to drag a little too long. Comic relief comes in the form of a cross-dressing mother who delivers a high-pitched scolding to her unorthodox daughter, backed up by a doctor who articulates the most dangerous possible symptom of bike-riding: the friction from the seat may cause a constant state of arousal.

Angie undergoes huge character development in this one-act play, and the audience struggles to follow her rapid transition from a whining homemaker to a violent activist. Personally, I was willing to believe that Angie might follow Olga’s militant strategy to the point of throwing a few bricks through shop windows late at night. I did become skeptical, however, when the previously benign Angie began building a bomb in her bicycle’s wicker basket to plant in one of the waterfront factories.

Both the particular setting of the performance and the energy of the cast and crew prevent the show from being significantly hindered by repetitive music or holes in the plot. Despite a rather implausible ending, “Bicycling” finds its stride by wholeheartedly embracing its own quirks.