Ride the Cyclone musical at Southwark Playhouse Elephant – review

Halloween was weeks ago, but theatregoers with a taste for the kitschy and gleefully morbid will think all their Christmases have come at once with this cultish 2009 Canadian musical, seen all over North America (including Off-Broadway in 2016) but only now receiving its UK premiere. On paper, Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell’s Ride the Cyclone would seem to be cut from the same cloth as such borderline bad taste pop-rock tuners as Little Shop of Horrors, Bat Boy and The Toxic Avenger, but on stage it turns out to be startlingly original.

It’s also utterly exhilarating, like a ride on the vertiginous fairground rollercoaster of the show’s title, the malfunction of which sends the sextet of teenagers, who make up the cast list, plummeting to their deaths. Stuck in a limbo presided over by The Amazing Karnak (a droll but thoroughly unsettling Edward Wu), a carnival fortune-teller automaton able to predict people’s date of death, the kids, who are all members of a youth choir, have to compete so that one of them can return to their earthly life.

In that sense, Ride the Cyclone resembles Six (which it predates) and Cats, and felines actually feature improbably but heavily in one of the outlandish production numbers. The show offers more than just a revue-like structure as the wildly contrasting teens battle for resurrection; it also has thoughtful things to say about the nature of belonging, the importance of kindness and communication, and how, ultimately, we don’t always appreciate what we have until we lose it. Before the lump-in-the-throat conclusion, though, there is a ton of rollicking fun to be had.

Lizzi Gee’s production, running at a sleek 90 minutes, is an embarrassment of riches, and the energy and invention never let up. Visually, it’s gorgeous with Ryan Dawson Laight’s seedy fairground set and Tim Deiling’s sinister rainbow lighting transporting the audience as soon as they enter the auditorium. The sound by Tom Marshall is crystal clear, which is helpful as the lyrics are frequently brilliant, and Ben McQuigg’s band is terrific.

The cast includes a trio of professional debuts, and each one suggests a star in the making. Robyn Gilbertson finds real depth in the good-hearted pushover with a surprisingly dark side, and joyously nails her “Sergeant Pepper”-esque “Sugar Cloud” solo. Bartek Kraszewski is hilarious (and jaw-droppingly athletic) as the Ukrainian bad boy with a penchant for auto-tuned gangsta rap and alcohol, while Jack Maverick captures hearts and stops the show cold as mute sci-fi enthusiast Ricky, who discovers his voice in the afterlife.

Baylie Carson is an obnoxious delight as self-assured go-getter Ocean, and Damon Gould stuns as “the most romantic boy in town”, nihilistic young gay Noel who fancies himself as a dissolute, self-harming French prostitute. The strangest, and arguably most haunting, character is Jane Doe, beheaded in the accident, with no memory of her previous life, her doll’s head in place of her severed own. Grace Galloway invests her with winsome weirdness and a thrilling lyric soprano.

Number after number raises the roof: a great musical features that special moment when it lifts off the ground, taking the ecstatic audience with it… Well, Ride the Cyclone has at least half a dozen. Richmond and Maxwell excel at inspired pastiche: an Avril Lavigne-like bop for Ocean, a mash-up of Brecht and Chanson for Noel, a dash of folk, a pinch of glam rock, and for Jane an intoxicating Music Hall ballad of longing that then segues into something akin to Kander and Ebb at their most glitteringly dark. Every number in this eclectic score is a winner.

But so is everything else about this magical, macabre little show. Sick in every sense of the word.