When I first read the online blurb for Ride the Cyclone at UT Austin, I wasn’t very interested. The plot seemed fine, but the marketing line about every song being in a different genre and having “something for everyone” seemed overdone. I’m a documented pop-concert-musicals hater! Who wants to see a musical with no consistency to its sound? But a friend of mine was going, so I went. Turns out my ick was unfounded. Cyclone is a sweet show and UT’s production was a fun, sparkly way to spend an afternoon.

Ride the Cyclone was originally performed in 2008, but seems to be popular now partially thanks to the power of TikTok. The script didn’t seem dated, so I wonder how much of it has been updated for its renaissance — or was it always a timeless piece?

The conceit is such: a fortune-teller machine named Karnak (Kira Small, who has an immense stage presence despite staying in one spot for the entire show) tells a group of recently-deceased Catholic school students that they can all make their case to each other, and at the end of the show, one of them can come back to life. So they do, which is where the different genres of song all come in. As each teen lives out whatever their inner truth is, their peers get to play backup dancer, with props pulled from seemingly nowhere, quick costume changes, and total commitment to the bit. The only songs that disappointed me were those sung by Mischa (David Gonima) — rapped, and with a Ukranian accent, so almost every word was lost to me — and Constance (Serenti Lynn Patterson) — that one, only because it seemed to only be about half as long as any other song that came before. Patterson was consistently the funniest actor on stage and I would have loved at least two more minutes of her pink candy cloud fantasy.

Director Jenny Lavery and scenic designer Tere Guerro C. dressed the set with multiple screens, including a giant screen as a backdrop. They’re used to great effect to tell us about characters, make a dream sequence happen, and provide some fun movement. The giant movie screen only gets corny at the very end when we’re treated to a Coke-commercial-type montage of life and its beauties. It was a little much for me; you’ve already had 90 minutes of characters coming to appreciate the short lives they lived, and the video montage just felt repetitive. But maybe that’s what life is too? Maybe it is in the very nature of the human experience that every so often we must see a play that experiments with incorporating video projections into live performances, and it is the nature of those that they must feature a video montage during the emotional last song? Is that just part of what makes humans such sweet, beautiful, delightful little creatures? Theater is wonderful.

Photo: UT Austin Department of Theatre and Dance

Ride the Cyclone closed at the B. Iden Payne Theatre on November 5, 2023. To read the online program, click here.