Ride the Cyclone begins with the Amazing Karnack, a carnival fair “precognition machine,” which specializes in predicting the exact time of people’s deaths, introducing a bass-playing rat named Virgil who will cause both of their deaths by chewing through a live-wire.

Then, shit starts to get weird. Ride the Cyclone is a superb piece of musical theatre, the kind of play that makes you want to drag friends to repeat viewings. It tells of six members of a teenage choir from the small town of Uranium, Saskatchewan who die on a rollercoaster named the Cyclone. They spend the afterlife arguing with Karnack and each other about how to be resurrected, pondering whether their shortened lives had any value or meaning, and best of all each taking a turn singing hilarious, beautiful, and deeply bizarre songs exposing the rich inner lives their town and peers had no patience for. Unlike so many films and plays that condescend to non-urbanites and congratulate themselves for unpeeling the perfect facades of idyllic rural or suburban life, Cyclone depicts what beauty and madness inhabits the imagination of every human being.

This generous production gives every character the chance to shine, and the show has many highlights. Elliot Loran plays Ricky, a mute disabled nerd who is a rock star on the planet Zolar, whose fantasies of being a swinging intergalactic bachelor accompanied by a harem of alien catwomen are somehow both filthy and adorable. The character of Ukrainian gangsta rapper Misha (Jameson Parker) segues from a fantastic and heavily autotuned hip-hop parody (with the genre-summing refrain “my life is awesome/ this beat is awesome/ robots are awesome”) to a moving ode to his online girlfriend that he will never meet. Kelly Hudson’s Constance delivers a lovely soliloquy about life’s intense and rarely described moments that isn’t quite like anything I’ve ever seen attempted in theatre or cinema. And Kholby Wardell is a powerhouse in a cheap black wig, whose Genet-quoting Noel Gruber laments that being gay in a small town is like having a laptop in the Stone Age – “you have it, but there’s nowhere to plug it in.” His cabaret number “Fucked up Girl” transforms him into a dissolute Parisian prostitute who lives the life of drama and romance that Noel never could. In the preview performance I watched, Wardell’s physical and erotic performance just about brought the house down.

This version of Ride the Cyclone has some differences from the show that played in Vancouver in 2011, including a framing device wherein the characters compete to be the one that Karnack returns to the land of the living. Playwright Jacob Richmond gets great comic mileage from the competition’s enigmatic and ever-shifting rules, and the device gives the story clear narrative drive that was lacking in the earlier version. But it also feels slightly arbitrary and unconnected to Cyclone‘s central theme. Rielle Braid’s Type A brown-noser Ocean Rosenberg is thrust into the role of protagonist, but the removal of a song delving into her mixed family background prevent her from being as likable as she needs to be. Overall, Cyclone’s excellent singing, choreography, and biting social commentary are awe-inspiring. Victoria’s theatre company Atomic Vaudeville specializes in making magic happen on a small budget, and I’ve never seen one of their productions without being amazed by the complexity of their accomplishments.

One friend I saw Cyclone with said “I loved this show, and I fucking hate musicals.” Another friend said she wanted to try to act the whole thing out in her room the next day, or at least buy the soundtrack. Go Ride the Cyclone, once or five times.

For tickets or more information: Ride the Cyclone is on now until Feb 16th on the Granville Island Stage. 

{Photo credit: Fairen Berchard}