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music and lyrics by Brooke Maxwell & Jacob Richmond, book by Jacob Richmond, directed by Britt Small & Jacob Richmond

Atomic Vaudeville with Acting Up Stage, Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, Toronto

November 14-December 3, 2011

“Hold on to Your Heads!”

Ride the Cyclone is surely the most wildly inventive musical Toronto has seen in years.  Many Canadian companies have aimed for quirkiness in their chamber musicals, but few have achieved it with such glorious panache as Victoria’s Atomic Vaudeville with their latest creation.  Think of Glee crossed with Twin Peaks and you’ll get some idea of the tunefully macabre fun in store.

The musical’s unconventional subject is the death of the entire St. Cassian Chamber Choir from Uranium, Saskatchewan, who die in a freak roller coaster accident at a travelling fair.  The narrator for the evening is Karnak (manipulated by James Insell), a mechanical fortune-telling machine, who had foreseen the tragedy but whose reprogramming for family audiences had banned him from revealing the truth to the victims.  In fact, he encouraged them to ride the Cyclone.  Out of remorse, he brings the choir back to life to stage one final concert to come to terms with their death.

Ocean Rosenberg (Rielle Braid), the bossy host of the show decides that each of the six members of the first-rate cast will tell their life story followed by a song.  First up is Noel Gruber (Kholby Wardell) as the only gay guy in Uranium.  His arty parent exposed him at an early age to French New Wave cinema and ever since then his dream has been to live the life as depicted by Jeanne Moreau and others of an abused, self-destructive French prostitute.  But poor Noel--not only does he die a virgin but he dies never even having kissed a man.  Wardell’s full-throttle torch song as his drag alter-ego is so full of flamboyant passion it stops the show within its first half hour.

After Noel comes Ocean and you wonder how she can live up to the high level he has set--but she does.  Her half Jewish, half Catholic background set her up as a debater and politician and she leads the group in a joyfully strong-voiced gospel number ironically not about truth abut about how to “Play to Win”.  With two uproarious show-stoppers in a row, you wonder how the show will keep up the pace.

Fortunately, the mood changes with Ukrainian immigrant Misha Bachinsky (Matthew Coulson) whose twin avocations are rap and ballet.  After a brief sample of the former, the cast switches into a hilarious recreation of a Ukrainian folk wedding where Misha marries the girl of his dreams whom he has only every seen on the internet.  This woman who may or may exist is represented by Chris Loran’s amusingly old-fashioned videography and the directors’ staging of the live actors’ interaction with the filmed bride is very clever.

Continuing the theme of fantasy, though on a more disturbing level are the scenes with the choir’s pathologically shy pianist Ricky Potts (Elliot Loran).  Neglected by his parents, Ricky retreated early in life into the world of comic books which has now become more real to him that the outside world.  According his song, “Space Age Bachelor Man”, sounding like David Bowie mixed with Queen, tells of his alter ego as the saviour of a planet inhabited by humanoids who have evolved from cats.  Besides the fact that Loran has a body made of rubber and great rockstar pipes, the fantastic change from mumbling nerd to Lycra-clad superhero has to be seen to be believed. 

This gives Jane Doe (Sarah Pelzer) a very hard act to follow.  Having been decapitated in the accident, her head never found, no one knows who she is.  Even she doesn’t know.  Her song is therefore has the least content of the six.  Even given the bizarre context of the action, I don’t see why the ghost of a human being should forget its own past.  I think it would be quite intriguing to know what is was about Jane Doe’s life that made her the girl that no one ever knew.  Unlike the other two female singers, Pelzer is a coloratura soprano and kept wishing that the music would let her show off the runs and trills that she is certainly capable of.  A foray into opera would only make her character even eerier.

Last up is chubby Constance Blackwood (Kelly Hudson) the only one of the six who grew up expecting to live and die in Uranium.  Her narrative about hopelessness turning to hatred is as disturbing as it is funny.  She alone saw the accident as a release from fate and her powerful song “Sugar Cloud” is a sweet yet creepy exultation about leaving the world behind. 

For all its hilarity a real pathos lurks within the show.  It’s not simply that six young people perished in an accident, but, as their life-stories show, that the six were already dying from the fate from being born in a small town in the middle of nowhere without possibilities and weighed down by the fear that dreams of escape were just illusions.  Riding the Cyclone provided the ultimate if unexpected escape.  Is that why Karnak told them all to take the ride? 

With a flawless cast, tight choreography, a clever eclectic score and its highly ambiguous satiric mood, this is a real one-of-a-kind musical that seems destined to become a cult hit both in Canada and beyond.           

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Elliott Loran, Rielle Braid, Sarah Pelzer, Matthew Coulson, Kelly Hudson and Kholby Wardell. ©2011 by Fairen Berchard.

For tickets, visit www.passemuraille.on.ca.