Cats, But They’re Dead and on a Roller Coaster
Ride the Cyclone makes its European premiere
By Josh Hightower
The cult-classic musical has rolled its way across the Atlantic.
This new production comes nearly a decade after the show was last seen off-Broadway, though it has had a flourishing regional life, particularly since gaining viral popularity on TikTok in 2022. As a result, Ride the Cyclone arrived in London with expectations in tow. Yet, this production feels distinctly its own, struggling with its small size at times, but demonstrating tremendous creativity that leaves you hoping for another ride, but perhaps on a larger scale.
Written by Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell, the show exists in a macabre limbo. After a roller coaster accident on the titular Cyclone kills St. Cassian School’s entire chamber choir, a mystical automated fortune teller, Karnak, reveals that he has the power to bring one child back to life, but that the children themselves must decide who over the next 90 minutes. What follows is all six children getting a song in the limelight to demonstrate why they should get another shot at life.
Deceptively clever, the show forces its ensemble and its audience to consider death with both wry humor and a heartfelt tenderness. Its characters are all caricatures, the nicest girl in town, the angriest boy in town, except for the unidentified Jane Doe, played by the pitch-perfect Grace Galloway. Her number, The Ballad of Jane Doe is a real highlight of the production, thrilling and chilling the audience as she laments a life she never had. Edward Wu’s Karnak looms from above the stage, almost conducting the production. However, above the theatre’s thrust stage, his visibility is greatly reduced to those seated along the sides of the stage, lending him less ominous omniscience than he perhaps deserves.
Director and choreographer Lizzi Gee has been stretched as far as she can to squeeze purgatory into the tiny Southwark Playhouse Elephant. Jane Doe cannot fly during her ballad like previous productions due to spatial limitations, and the comedy suffers with the audience practically sitting on top of the cast. Hearing every squeak of the actors’ shoes slowly, quickly takes its toll. However, despite this, Gee fills every inch of the stage with life in numbers such as What the World Needs, in which “the most successful girl in town,” Baylie Carson’s irritatingly well played Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg, brags that her achievements make her the obvious choice for a new life, all while her peers sing backup for her, in Gee’s comical, on the nose ensemble choreography.
Outside of the auditorium itself, however, some moments leave the audience wanting more. Constance Blackwood, “the nicest girl in town,” relatably portrayed by Robyn Gilbertson, gets what should be a spectacular moment of clarity in Sugar Cloud, but it fails to stand out from preceding numbers. The final solo, unfortunately, sums up the production: clever and likeable, but not fully satisfying. Still, it is hard not to end up rooting for the production, just like its characters. When not upstaged by awkward aisle entrances and exits, Gee’s staging and trickery are captivating, making you wonder what this production would be capable of in a bigger house with a bigger stage, allowing her to better direct attention. Maybe someday, in a new home, the Cyclone can go around again and give an even better ride.
