One of the best : Metropolis’ ‘Ride the Cyclone’ revival is quite a ride
“Ride the Cyclone” ― 4 stars
“Ride the Cyclone” may be the best musical unknown to theatergoers who are not Gen Zers (or young millennials).
The ecstatic response from the youngish opening-night crowd to Metropolis Performing Arts Centre’s outstanding revival of the darkly endearing 2009 tuner suggests as much.
Playbill traced the popularity of the cult musical — a coming-of-age tale for people who stopped aging — to a video of a ballad sung by the character Jane Doe (more about her later) that went viral on social media several years ago.
Embraced by the digital generation, the quirkily macabre musical by Canadian writers/lyricists/composers Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell inched from the fringe nearly to the mainstream. Set to a score that incorporates rock, rap and opera, “Ride the Cyclone” recounts the story of six high school choristers who are killed in a freak roller coaster accident, then offered a second chance.
In early 2025, Aurora’s Paramount Theatre announced the show would be part of the Copley Theatre’s upcoming Bold Series until “widespread budgetary constraints” forced the series’ cancellation.
Paramount’s loss was Metropolis’ gain.
The most vocally impressive production since 2023’s “Ragtime” and the most completely realized since that year’s “The Addams Family: The Musical,” Metropolis’ “Ride the Cyclone” is one of the best shows I’ve experienced at the theater since I began covering it more than 20 years ago.
That’s saying something considering the revival marks the directorial debut of Lillian Castillo, who brings compassion, humor and a smidgen of menace to a show she knows intimately.
Castillo co-starred in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s 2015 U.S. premiere and remained with the show for six years during runs off-Broadway, in Seattle and in Atlanta. She’s also featured on the original cast recording.
Kudos to Castillo, her exuberant septet (who pack a vocal wallop) and creative team. Metropolis’ production looks and sounds marvelous.
Music director/conductor Carolyn Brady’s crackerjack quintet includes fellow keyboard player Lily Shapkarov, guitarist Eion Meldrum, bassist Devin Parks and drummer Maddi Vogel.
Denise Karczewski provides the eerie, jewel-toned lighting, Anthony Churchill supplies projections that range from trippy to nostalgic, and designer Sarah Ramos conjures carnival sounds.
The action unfolds on Angela Weber Miller’s spookily whimsical set, which consists of a tumbledown warehouse containing the chipped and rusted remains of an amusement park: broken rides; abandoned midway booths; a decaying, vaudeville-style funhouse proscenium; and a coin-operated fortuneteller who goes by name Amazing Karnak. Played with wry dispassion by Dave Honigman, Karnak serves as narrator.
He informs the deceased teens — members of the Saint Cassian Chamber Choir from Uranium City, Saskatchewan — that they will decide among themselves, by unanimous vote, who gets the do-over.
The stakes set, each student pleads his or her case.
First up is Ocean (Alex Merkel, radiating front-of-class energy), the student body president and smartest girl in town, who argues in the deliciously self-aggrandizing “What the World Needs” that she deserves to win because the world needs more movers and shakers.
Her classmates take a different approach. Rather than argue their merits, they share their life stories.
Noel (Peyton Owen), the town’s sole gay resident, dreams in the cheeky “Noel’s Lament” of living his life as a tragic Parisian chanteuse à la Marlene Dietrich. Ukrainian refugee Mischa (Eric Amundson) adopts a gangsta persona to mask his deeply romantic soul, which Amundson expresses in “Talia,” a wistful ode to the girlfriend he met online. Jane Doe (Amelia Tam, a silver-toned soprano) is the forgotten girl no one recalls, who arrives carrying a headless doll. Decapitated in the accident, her remains were unclaimed. In her aforementioned aria, the wrenching “The Ballad of Jane Doe,” she laments her lost identity and missing memories.
Eldon Warner-Soriano plays reticent Ricky, a sci-fi aficionado who in the glam-rock “Space Age Bachelor Man” imagines himself as a studly superhero destined to help repopulate a planet inhabited by cats.
On opening night, understudy Rylee Michelle took over the role of Constance, a nice girl with no self-esteem usually played by Diana Marilyn Alvarez. For most of the musical, Constance, like her classmates, wants a second chance to escape a seemingly small life in a dead-end town. As the competition concludes, she reconsiders in the heartfelt 11 o’clock number “Jawbreaker/Sugarcloud.” In a powerhouse performance, Michelle’s Constance recognizes life’s simple joys: “smelling Jiffy markers/listening to music/and dancing around my room before going out to a party.”
“It took a horrible accident for me to realize how wonderful everything is,” she sings, in recognition that one doesn’t have to live large or long to live meaningfully.
“Are all lives worth fighting for?” Castillo asks in her director’s note. “Does a ‘simple’ life mean as much as a ‘loud’ one?”
“Ride the Cyclone” answers both questions convincingly.
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Location: Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 W. Campbell St., Arlington Heights, 847-577-2121, metropolisarts.com
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 2 and 6:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday through Oct. 25
Running time: About 90 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $25-$49
Parking: Nearby garage and street parking
Rating: For teens and older; includes adult language and sexual references. The show also references death, drugs, alcohol and depression.