Theatre in Review: Ride the Cyclone (MCC Theater at Lucille Lortel Theatre)

	Emily Rohm and the cast. Photo: Joan Marcus

The premise of Ride the Cyclone sounds like something from the old TV series The Twilight Zone: A sextet of adolescents is killed in a roller coaster accident. Transported to the astral plain, they have to decide which one of them can return to life; the catch is, the vote has to be unanimous. The authors, Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond, seem to dwell in a twilight zone of their own, in which musicals need not make sense nor offer any emotional engagement. Quirkiness -- with a capital Q -- is their goal, and they deliver, big time. In the world of this show, peculiarity is its own reward.

The action is presided over by The Amazing Karnak, not the old Johnny Carson comic character but one of those mechanical fortune-telling machines that dotted the carnivals of your grandparents' day. (Karnak is played by Karl Hamilton, shoved inside a cramped booth, his upper body covered in a costume and mask; he's one of the hardest-working actors in town.) The teen victims, all but one members of their school's chamber choir, are a mix of threadbare stereotypes -- the head overachiever/mean girl; her plump, frizzy-haired, low-self-esteem acolyte; and the tragic gay kid, who affects a spurious air of sophistication -- interspersed with a couple of original ideas: a furious, vodka-swilling Ukrainian adoptee, and the handicapped, mute kid who, on the edge of the next world, sheds his afflictions. (It's typical of the book that we're supposed to find it cute that the choir featured a boy with no voice.) The wild card in this deck is a mystery teen, known only as Jane Doe. She is unknown to the others and has no memory, and cannot be identified, but Karnak insists that she was another student. She is dressed in a school uniform like the others, but why her blouse is made of lace and her hair is arranged in Victorian sausage curls -- not to mention her rouged cheeks and doll-like affect -- is possibly known only by the costume designer, Theresa Ham.

The bulk of the show's action consists of each kid making the case for why he or she should be allowed to live. It's A Chorus Line with an all-deceased cast, and once the tedious and arbitrary ground rules are established, it starts off on a bright note in which Ocean O'Connell Rosenberg, the overachiever, campaigns to win, with a fast, funny number, "What the World Needs Is People Like Me." Pointing out that none of the others is on the success track, she dismisses them imperiously and hilariously: "You got the sandwich artist, the security guard?/The Walmart greeter with an overdrawn credit card/He 'smoke the ganja,' Ooo, it's so groovy/To stay at home and watch another Will Smith movie!"

The spell of barbed, macabre humor is damagingly dispelled with the introduction of Noel Gruber, the tormented gay teen who, we are told, "was suspended for suddenly breaking into this excerpt from Waiting for Godot" during the school's Nativity pageant. For his number, he rips off his clothes, revealing a black slip, and, donning a wig, makes like Edith Piaf's seedy younger sister in a little ditty called "Noel's Lament." Striking abject poses on the floor, he howl sings, "I want to be that fucked up girl." The song has nothing to do with Noel's character; it's a songwriter's conceit, executed as broadly as possible, and it's one of the most ruthlessly unfunny comic numbers I've seen in a long time.

Mischa, the Ukrainian -- his mother died of uranium poisoning acquired at Chernobyl, where she was hired to clean up -- has a similarly overwrought pair of songs: a loud, unfunny rap parody and a sobbing ballad in honor of the girl with whom he has an Internet relationship. Things start to get trippy when the formerly disabled Ricky turns up in a skin-tight glam-rock outfit right out of David Bowie to perform a tribute to his two obsessions, the galaxy and cats, in an indescribable little something called "Space Age Bachelor Man." The next number, "The Ballad of Jane Doe," pretty much stops the show, not because the music and lyrics are so clever but because of the stunning flying effect that sends the actress Emily Rohm floating and spinning through the air with no apparent means of support. The show snaps back to life when Constance Blackwood, the female sad sack, delivers her upbeat, sucrose-infused philosophy of life in an insanely appealing bit of indie pop called "Sugarcloud."

After this comes several minutes of milling about and a couple of rule changes from Karnak before the final vote takes place. I certainly didn't expect the outcome but, even with an extensive projection sequence detailing the years to come in the winner's life, the emotional payoff is nil, because the songs neither illuminate the characters nor help explain why they should be allowed to live. At the end of the 90-minute running time, we don't know anything more about them than we did when the roller coaster jumped the tracks. Adding to the confusion is a final number that sends them all off to -- where? I can't say, since the lyrics run along the lines of "We're all just sailing through space/There's no up, there's no down/It's all so beautiful and strange/But so much more than spinning round." Well, I'm glad that we got that cleared up.

Ride the Cyclone looks and sounds much better than it is, thanks to Rachel Rockwell's direction and choreography and a top-flight cast of fresh faces. As Ocean, Tiffany Tatreau is so guilelessly self-aggrandizing that you can't help but like her; if someone ever makes a musical out of the Reese Witherspoon film Election, Tatreau would be ideal casting. Gus Halper nails Mischa's accent and studiously Slavic angst. Lillian Castillo makes Constance into a model mouse, but when her number comes along, boy does she ever roar. Alex Wyse brings a subtly underplayed sense of madness that goes a long way toward selling Ricky's oddball space-and-cats number. Kholby Wardell, saddled with Noel, a dreary gay-teen cliché, manages to make him at least a little bit likable, and he certainly handles his number fearlessly. Rohm has little to do but look enigmatic, but she does it well.

Also, the production design is slicker than anything I've ever seen at MCC. Scott Davis' set frames the action with a cut-off piece of coaster track, a sign saying "Cyclone," and other carnival details; Mike Tutaj's projections range from point-of-view sequences on the roller coaster to scenes from high school and fantasy imagery that supports the numbers. In one particularly clever effect, before his or her solo number, each character pulls a lever and, accompanied by one-arm-bandit-style sound effects -- part of Garth Helm's fine sound design -- a series of photos from his or her past appears in the upstage proscenium arch. Greg Hofmann's lighting uses color and chiaroscuro to create the right creepy atmosphere; he also creates a distinct style for each number. The special effects, by Michael Curry Design and Hat Rabbit Studio, effectively add to the eerie atmosphere.

Still, it's hard to get away from the idea that Ride the Cyclone is little more than a batch of random songs strung together by way of a forced, silly narrative concept. About halfway through, I concluded that if none of the characters made it back to this earth, the world would keep turning just fine. -- David Barbour