REVIEW: Shifting Ground Collective delivers heartfelt, overloaded Ride the Cyclone
iPhoto caption: The company of 'Ride the Cyclone.' Photo by Taylor Long.
If you knew the moment of your upcoming death, would you change your life?
In Brooke Maxwell and Jacob Richmond’s hit musical Ride the Cyclone, which first played Toronto in 2010 at SummerWorks Performance Festival and has since been produced all over North America, six high school students, choristers from tiny Uranium, Saskatchewan, board a rollercoaster and take their final journey.
At the top of the loop, the Cyclone will jump its tracks, sending them plummeting to their doom — but also to a liminal space where they’ll sing about their dreams for a future that they now know will never come.
This is my third ride on the Cyclone, after the SummerWorks production and a 2011 Theatre Passe Muraille staging, and unlike the kids (as well as the musical, which has seen several revisions), I’ve come out unscathed. An eerie dark comedy, the show produces ironic humour like the teens’ dead-end town mines uranium, while having staying power via the sympathetic desires of its unique and quirky characters.
Shifting Ground is a young company already known for its high-quality productions of complex shows like Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, and its success at this year’s Dora Awards. In Ride the Cyclone at the Annex Theatre, director 郝邦宇 Steven Hao hits the carnival bullseye when it comes to heart and fun, but just misses the top prize by expanding the cast and reducing the original’s compelling creepiness.
We hear about the students’ demise via the fortune-telling machine that predicts it, The Amazing Karnak, who offers only one of the children a chance at regaining life. This will be his final act: he’s fully aware of his own upcoming end at the teeth of a rat named Virgil (also the bass player), who will chew through his power cord within 90 intermission-less minutes.
Maxwell and Richmond follow the tried and true Cats playbook, where each character sings a song determining who wins the prize. Catholic-Jewish Type-A overachiever Ocean O’Connell-Rosenberg (a commanding Sarah Evasiw) demands Karnak tell her what lesson to learn from her short existence as she tries to steamroll her classmates, particularly best friend and shy second banana Constance Blackwood (Claudia Adamo, whose moving monologue is a highlight). Uranium’s sole gay teen, Noel Gruber (Eric Martin delivers a showstopping tango-inflected solo) is a dramatic nihilist who pines for the life of a female prostitute straight out of a dour French film.
Ricky Potts (the winningly awkward Misha Sharivker), in life mute from trauma, reveals a rich inner world where he’s the hero of a science fiction serial. Originally from Ukraine, Mischa Bachinski (Alex Yoannou) fancies himself a successful rapper and claims to have a fiancee who he talks to primarily through social media comments; Yoannou efficiently navigates near-instant shifts from tough to tender. Costume designer Claudia Matas personalizes how each wears the Catholic school uniform, some hiding fun surprises.
Unusually, we learn about the characters almost entirely from the elaborate fantasy worlds they’ve created as escapes from their backwater town, where diversity means eating Taco Bell and learning about Africa from The Lion King. This theme feels even more relevant in 2025 than in 2010, as teens construct increasing portions of their lives as avatars.
Ride the Cyclone is an intimate musical with seven characters; like a balloon artist, Hao swells the cast to 12. Karnak, usually a single entity in an upright box, is now six clownlike figures who pass a glowing orb as they speak. One of Shifting Ground’s goals is to create more opportunities for artists, but while an expanded cast opens up more possibilities for choreographer Madison Arnason, who gives us fun cheerleading and rap-video-style dances, it ultimately unbalances a delicately balanced narrative.
In most productions, Karnak is a sympathetic rather than insufferable narrator because he’s as trapped as the children are, as much a victim of fate for knowing it. The six people cavorting like a set of movable funhouse mirrors make Karnak less eerie and remote, his witty remarks reading as cruel. The orb, a strong visual, doesn’t always get to who’s speaking in time. And though all the Karnaks dance and sing well, they magnify the small Annex’s sound balance issues, with the doubled chorus often drowning out the leads. When it’s only the six teens, you can hear everything (sound design by Anthony Allan).
Six teens, you ask? Well, there’s a mystery youth, Jane Doe (Shannon Murtagh), who nobody knows and whose head, we’re told in song, was severed and never found. Jane’s character usually lets Cyclone raise the fear factor, but while Murtagh’s lovely, ethereal soprano on microphone reverb brings some chills, there’s no ghostly effect via makeup or costume to denote Jane’s missing head as in other productions; here, rosy-cheeked Jane’s only creepiness is a lack of social skills. Other than lighting designer Mathilda Kane’s illuminated CYCLONE letters that effectively wink in and out, the atmosphere could use more edge.
This Cyclone, already sold out, is still worth a ride; a strong cast adeptly navigates the emotional roller coaster. Despite the teens’ desire to change everything about their lives, the show powerfully argues that those lives were also meaningful right where they were.
It’s just that coasters can break down if you overload the car.
Ride the Cyclone runs at the Annex Thetre until October 4. More information is available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
Ilana Lucas
Ilana Lucas is a professor of English in Centennial College’s School of Advancement. She is the President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association. She holds a BA in English and Theatre from Princeton University, an MFA in Dramaturgy and Script Development from Columbia University, and serves as Princeton’s Alumni Schools Committee Chair for Western Ontario. She has written for Brit+Co, Mooney on Theatre, and BroadwayWorld Toronto. Her most recent play, Let’s Talk, won the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival’s 24-Hour Playwriting Contest. She has a deep and abiding love of musical theatre, and considers her year working for the estate of Tony winners Phyllis Newman and Adolph Green one of her most treasured memories.
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