The bulk of the show's action consists of each kid making the case for why he or she should be allowed to live. 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. She is unknown to the others and has no memory, and cannot be identified, but Karnak insists that she was another student. (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. (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.
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.
In the world of this show, peculiarity is its own reward. Quirkiness - with a capital Q - is their goal, and they deliver, big time. 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. 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 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. Theatre in Review: Ride the Cyclone (MCC Theater at Lucille Lortel Theatre)Įmily Rohm and the cast.