Magnolia Theatre Company photos
Ocean O’Connor Rosenberg is tearing up the stage with her friends, forming them into a human pyramid. She’s belting out an uptempo song at the top of her lungs. She’s gotten all her friends to support her — literally — but the song she’s singing, if you listen carefully to the lyrics ricocheting by, is actually about how much better she is than they are. Is it fair? Is it mean? Is it even true?
The answers are probably no, yes, and no. But on the other hand, can we really blame O’Connor Rosenberg for wanting to come out on top? She’s literally singing for her life.
Ride the Cyclone, which ran this weekend at Whitneyville Cultural Commons in a production mounted by Magnolia Theatre Company, tells the story of six teenagers — Ocean O’Connor Rosenberg (Chloe Zito), Noel Gruber (Joshua Cruz), Mischa Bachinski (Jaison Haynes), Ricky Potts (Jacob Gannon), Constance Blackwood (July Roche), and a Jane Doe (Gwen Kirkland) — who die in a roller coaster accident in the fictional town of Uranium City, Saskatchewan and regain sentience in a limbo overseen by fortune teller Karnak (Vinnie Santiago and Maya Johnson).
Karnak informs them that one of them can be brought back to life. The question is, which one? Each of them must state their case for why they should be chosen. Karnak ends the explanation of the situation with a cryptic message: “The one who wants to win it the most shall redeem the loser in order to complete the whole.” What follows is an ensemble piece in which each character gets to have their say — in song — while we also learn, bit by bit, more about their own histories and the connections and dislocations among them.
Created by Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell, Ride the Cyclone is frequently funny, full of upbeat, catchy numbers, and in the end, quite moving. But part of the show’s mystique, apart from its gleefully macabre premise, comes from its unlikely history. The musical had its first run in 2008 in Victoria, British Columbia, and enjoyed some success over subsequent years, with several productions in the U.S. and Canada, including runs at Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. But it remained a relatively minor musical — until it showed up on TikTok just a couple years ago.
@apollonianmind outing myself as a theatre kid. also sorry about not posting for almost a month it wont happen again (it will happen again) #ridethecyclone #ridethecyclonemusical #ridethecyclonejanedoe #janedoeridethecyclone #janedoertc #rtcjanedoe #theatre #musical ♬ The Ballad of Jane Doe - Emily Rohm & Ride the Cyclone World Premiere Cast Recording Ensemble
From this initial post, viewers tracked down the original cast recording of the play and began posting songs from it on TikTok as well. Memes, cosplays, and more followed, adding up to hundreds of thousands of likes and millions of views, a bonafide viral hit. Ride the Cyclone had found its bigger audience at last — among people who had been in elementary or nursery school when it first came out.
As a case in point, Bradley P. Ellis, director of Magnolia Theatre Company, discovered the play through his daughters, who “insisted I listen to this musical,” he writes in the program notes. In Playbill, Meg Masseron outlines how the play’s allure to Gen Z is more substantial than the songs making for good TikToks. “Chillingly dark and wittily funny, it makes sense that the tone and themes of Ride the Cyclone resonate strongly with Gen Z, who is largely known for their habit of making memes and online jokes about their own trauma,” Masseron writes. “But, Gen Z’s love for Ride the Cyclone may go deeper than just jokes.” She explains:
Contemplating what, historically, has impacted this generation in their lifetime, Gen Z’s connection with the story speaks for itself, when you look closely. This is a group that has scarcely known a world without the internet, without frequent mass shootings, or a world before 9/11. Although every generation has its traumatic historic events, Gen Z is certainly the first generation to only witness horrors in real-time through the vast reach of social media, not to mention the ubiquitous 24-hour news cycle. In a world where word of school shootings originates from tweets sent by students hiding under desks, Gen Z is constantly exposed — arguably overexposed — to tragedy and terror. Not to mention that for many of them, their formative years occurred in the midst of a global pandemic, where their only interaction with the outside world was through the Internet.
She continues:
On top of that, with the internet serving as a much faster, more efficient tool to do their own research outside of school, Gen Z is known for their political and social advocacy. We're a generation who has, at a remarkably young age, figured out we have to fight for ourselves in this inequitable world (the writer of this article is a proud Gen Z-er).
Thus, the “Teenagers Against The World” trope continues to proliferate. Think of The Hunger Games, Percy Jackson, even Harry Potter. It’s a formula that notoriously scores big with Gen Z audiences. In it, you have young people who are, give or take, just normal teens, facing dystopian governments, angry gods, or nefarious magical beings — all of these omniscient higher powers that young characters have to stand up against to save themselves, or even to save the world. And Ride the Cyclone, with its teenaged characters fighting against the injustice of the world, fits that bill perfectly.
But Ride the Cyclone isn’t just for people in their teens and 20s. Ellis writes that “the minute I started listening to the soundtrack, I was pulled into this world of humor, sadness, and hope. The outlandish characters, side splitting songs, and touching story had me wondering why I hadn’t heard of this musical before.”
It’s a fair question. Ride the Cyclone shares some sensibility with a certain lurid, absurd Off-Broadway style of a decade before it (e.g., Bat Boy: The Musical), and partakes of some of the delicious morbid campiness of Tim Burton’s earliest movies, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and some of the edgier musicals of the 70s. The musical’s referential nod to Marlene Dietrich, queen vamp of a long-gone era, is half the musical citing its own earliest sources.
Ride the Cyclone is in many ways ideal for a small theater company because its setting of limbo doesn’t require an elaborate set; it just needs six leads who can sing and act. Regarding the set, Magnolia’s choice to stage the theater in a church is inspired, and its set (by Jill Butler) deploys broken coaster tracks to amply convey what the teenagers died of as well as giving the sense that perhaps their spirits are still floating there in the air above the amusement park.
Meanwhile, Magnolia Theatre Company’s cast is more than up to the challenge in both departments. Zito nails Ocean O’Connell-Rosenberg’s overachieving personality while also making room for some compassion. July Roche scores as Constance Blackwood, Ocean’s near-opposite, who hides some deep self-loathing beneath an amiable surface. Jaison Haynes is hilarious as the over-the-top rapping Ukrainian Mischa Bachinski, and Jacob Gannon soars with Ricky Potts’s astonishing flights of imagination. Gwen Kirkland is eerie and quietly heartbreaking as Jane Doe, the doll-like body found without a head. And Joshua Cruz slays as Noel Gruber, the queer poet who has died too young to truly be either, but has a chance to live out a couple fantasies to the fullest.
Karnak is given a brilliant concept, embodied by Maya Johnson who plays him like a dancer while Vinnie Santiago voices him from offstage. A chorus of dancers fills out the stage and the aisles with whirling motion. And Virgil The Rat (Jake Murdock) is there to remind us that even Karnak has his own end waiting for him.
The only pity of this production is that it closed on Aug. 11. But its production remains important as the first in the area; hopefully, based on enthusiasm for people to see it, there will be more. Part of the thrill lies in seeing a musical with a reputation that precedes it, and which is gaining steady traction. Like many of the best ostensibly light comedies, it finds depth and poignancy seemingly without trying. Amid all the jokes and upbeat dance numbers, after all, the six teenagers remain keenly aware that they all died far too soon, and had no say in the manner of their death. Their anger and sadness are always there, even when they’re playing for laughs. By the end of the musical, you don’t want to let any of them go. But go they must.