Review: Teen Angels Compete For A Second Chance in RIDE THE CYCLONE

For a musical about the accidental death of six teenagers and a contest to select just one of them to return to life, Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond's Ride the Cyclone, mounted by MCC after development in Canadian cabarets and a successful Chicago run, is curiously lacking in any kind of emotion or tension.

Director and choreographer Rachel Rockwell's production is a lively one, featuring a boisterously talented cast and exceptional work by the visual design team of Scott Davis (set), Theresa Ham (costumes) and Greg Hofmann (lights), but while the book contains a decent number of guffaws and the score exudes a pleasant assortment of contemporary sounds, the hints that something of significant profundity is contained within the text are left unfulfilled.

In a musty old warehouse containing the broKen Down artifacts of once-thriving carnival, a mechanical fortune teller named The Amazing Karnak, played by a masked Karl Hamilton within his glass enclosure, spews out one-liners and informs us that he only has a little more than an hour to be functional because a rat named Virgil (Bobby Wooten, the bass player for music director Remy Kurs' four piece band) has been chewing on his power cable and, as he can predict, will soon bite down on two hundred volts of electricity.

So now that the time limit has been set, we get to the plot. Six teenage members of the Saint Cassian Chamber Choir have just completed competing in an international singing competition with such demanding standards that last year, despite being the only choir entered, they came in second. But a celebratory roller coaster ride leaves them all dead after a loop-de-loop derailment.

Karnak explains to them the rules of a contest that will allow the winner a chance to rejoin the living, setting up the dramatic through line that each one will have a big character-explaining song before the decision is made.

Naturally, each kid is an archetype. Ocean (funny and energetic Tiffany Tatreau) is the high achieving daughter of hippie parents with overactive self-esteem. She sings a pop anthem celebrating herself. Constance (Lillian Castillo) is the shy girl who eventually breaks through with a big belty number. Noel (Kholby Wardell) is the only gay kid in town and gets a torchy cabaret spot and Mischa (Gus Halper) is the Ukrainian bad-boy rap artist.

During life, the others pretty much defined Ricky (Alex Wyse) by his disability, but now he tosses aside his crutches for a glam-rock sci-fi number.

The symbolic wild card is "Jane Doe," an unidentified girl who was decapitated in the accident. Emily Rohm is made up to look like a life-sized marionette's head was placed on her body and she's lifted from the ground while singing a ghostly soprano aria.

The potential for serious exploration of the horror show that is teenage society is certainly there, but Ride the Cyclone plays more like a talent show where each character's big number is checked off before some kind of philosophy is introduced to fabricate an ending. But no doubt, it will have its fans. Once the rights are offered, watch the high school productions pile up for this one.

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