Photo by Jennifer Heim
Ride the Cyclone is part comedy, part ghost story, part after-school special, part John Hughes movie, and fully a reminder that life is too short to waste. Written by Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell and inspired by the real death of Richmond’s sister, this small, exquisitely constructed musical takes us to the tiny Saskatchewan town of Uranium City, which has just experienced a tragedy: six of its high school choir students have been killed in an accident on a local carnival’s roller coaster.
The musical, directed by Lillian Castillo, opens with a surreal scene in which a headless girl in a filthy school uniform replaces her head with that of a doll, before taking us to what apparently is a limbo that looks a lot like the carnival’s grounds. We are told by the fortune-telling machine The Amazing Karnac (meticulously played by Dave Honigman complete with robotic movements) that the choir members should not have died, and he is feeling guilty about not being able to warn them. (He was set on Family Fun mode by the carnival’s owners, a setting that severely limited his fortunes.) Still, he has found a way to save one of them…providing they all agree on which one it will be.
To repeat: a group of teens must unanimously decide on who will live while the rest die.
The show is a series of songs and scenes in which the teenagers try to explain why they should be the one who is chosen, orchestrated by the possibly devious Karnac who, due to his psychic power, knows that at this moment a rat is chewing through his power cord and he will die within the hour…a fact that provides a time limit for the students’ decision.
This description suggests that Cyclone is a bummer of a play where even the mystical entity who might save one of them has some devious agenda, but it is certainly not that: this is one of the most uplifting death-dominated musicals you can even imagine.
Throughout the show, we meet the six characters, each of whom has a story to tell. There is the class genius Ocean (Alex Merkel), who spent her life being “good” and feels owed for it, yet she is manipulative in the way she has climbed the school’s social ladder: she even scripted the “improv” scenes that she did with her best friend Constance (Diana Marilyn Alvarez), berating the girl if she ever went off script. You know, as in, um, improv?
Other characters have their own complaints about their lives. Noel Gruber (Peyton Owen) is the only out gay boy in town. He dreams about being an exotic French hooker, but in reality works at a fast food franchise. Mischa Bachinski is a Ukrainian adoptee who lost his real parents to the fallout from the Chernobyl incident. In Uranium, he adopted a tough guy image, but all he really wanted was a life with his long-distance girlfriend. Ricky Potts (Eldon Warner-Soriano) was a lonely science fiction geek who didn’t even speak while alive, a psychological result of witnessing his father’s death. He lived in his personal fantasy of saving a race of cat women in space.
“Jane Doe,” the headless girl from the opening, doesn’t know anything about her life. (Nor does anyone else: apparently she was brand new to the school, and no one actually knew her. And the lack of a head didn’t help.) This role is usually played by Amelia Tam, but I saw Molly Bremer in the role and she was suitably both creepy and sad. As to Constance, she reveals that she hated her parents for forcing her to live in Uranium and felt that she had never lived her own life.
The whole thing is rather Breakfast Club-y, except for the death part. But these actors sell it brilliantly, and we end up caring for them all, even the self-centered Ocean. And if the identity of the “saved” kid feels a bit obvious, that is not a problem: ultimately it is believable that the teens would choose as they do. Castillo’s direction, on a set designed by Angela Weber Miller and lit by Denise Karczewski with projections by Anthony Churchill and sound by Sarah Ramos, is tight and often very clever, as is the choreography by Mandy Modoc. Carolyn Brady directs a five-piece orchestra in songs that range from pop to ballad to rap. They all work well in the moment, but it’s hard to remember any of them a few days later; still, the sum of them all is that we should live our lives while we can. There is no right way or wrong way to live your life. Just, as the old Nike ad told us, do it. Life may well be a cyclone, but the only thing you can do is strap yourself in and ride.
Ride the Cyclone is playing at the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 West Campbell Street, Arlington Heights through October 25. Check the website for specific dates, times, and tickets. Find more information about current plays in our recommendations and at theatreinchicago.com.