Kaelin Viera ’27
Fortunes and Fame: Supernatural Elements in Ride the Cyclone
In 2008, a new Canadian play premiered. It was not until over a decade later, in 2022, that it would become a TikTok sensation. Despite the change in songs, scenes, and actors, the show gained a substantial dedicated fanbase. Ride the Cycloneis a musical by Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell that follows six high school choir members who die in a roller coaster accident. Suddenly finding themselves in a run-down warehouse in the presence of a godly machine, they must vote on who gets to live again. The show is complete with a wide array of musical genres, from glam rock to autotuned rap. Perhaps what resonates with its newfound audience most, however, is the musical’s heart. Ride the Cycloneuses the supernatural to explore death through its narrator, motifs, and production design.
The inclusion of a sentient, fortune-telling machine as the narrator enhances the choir kids’ realization of their fate. The Amazing Karnak is an omniscient automated machine that can accurately predict everyone’s death but has no way of communicating it due to his “family fun mode” setting. While he could tell the children who came up to him were going to die on the rollercoaster, he had no choice but to recommend that they “ride the cyclone.” Karnak is based on real-life attractions like Zoltar, which gained popularity in the eighties and uses vague references to Eastern cultures to profit. Of fortune-telling machines, Ken Feingold writes, “The underlying primitivism in modernist culture allowed the acceptance of divination systems from the East as members of the class ‘the exotic,’” (Feingold 400). While perhaps problematic in reality, here, Karnak’s mystery is effective in establishing him as the quiet orchestrator of the story and speaks to a human desire to be told what is going to happen. Feingold continues, “The idea is clear–we know that our time is limited and that we want things in our lives to happen in accord with our wishes. Realizing that our wishes have little power, we have sought technologies for gaining knowledge of the future,” (Feingold 399). While these fortunes are usually not taken seriously, Ride the Cyclone affirms that Karnak really can tell the future and is motivated to use his abilities to create a safe space for a traumatic situation. Many of his lines are delivered directly to the audience, resembling a game show host, and his deadpan demeanor is in contrast to that of the worried teenagers whose stories he tells. He candidly announces his own death will be the end of the show, meanwhile, he plants cryptic seeds to indicate what else will happen in the 90-minute time frame. He provides the kids with a prophecy that is not deciphered until the end. Karnak’s being the mastermind behind the plot and his acceptance of his own death eventually permit the children to do the same.
Richmond employs motifs, musically and thematically, in order to solidify character development. Each character has their own catchphrase, provided by Karnak, and a solo song, which is meant to reflect a deep part of themselves they dreamed about while alive. The choir members could not be more different, even singing in distinct genres, though they are tied together by themes of overcoming grief in the wake of their own deaths. In the opening number, the group sings, “And everything you loved / And everything you dreamed / And everything you feared / And everything that seems so / Oh, so terrifying.” Richmond does this to represent what the choir is losing by dying, and how everything is terrifying in the present. Then, in the finale, they all sing, “And everything that seemed so / Oh, so terrifying.” The switch from the present tense (“seems”) to the past tense (“seemed”) emphasizes the characters’ growth throughout the show. Many productions will stage these parts similarly, having the performers act like they are back on the rollercoaster at the end of the show as if life or this retelling of life is cyclical. This is supported by the other shared lyrics between these songs, stating that life goes “round and round and round.” According to the New York Times, “Mr. Richmond began thinking about grief when a sister died, but he didn’t want to make a show that felt depressing. ‘I wanted people to feel lighter when they left, like when you go on a roller coaster,’ Mr. Richmond said,” (Murphy). Though the ending of the show is eerie and left slightly ambiguous, the flipped script provides some relief from the typical gravity of death as a theme.
The disorientation of the characters in their newfound circumstance is also emphasized through the show’s design. Though each production is different, certain elements enhance the core themes of coping with death. One image used is that of the door that leads back to life from purgatory. Its use is comparable to a gate to heaven in a lot of media, except its location takes the characters backward, not forwards. The door, sometimes indicated by the simple drawback of a curtain, may be highlighted with light and smoke to entice the children to do their best in the competition and enter that dreamlike beyond. Beyond character development, the scenic design of the show contributes to the otherworldly, ominous tone. Smoke-filled stages and patterned lighting emanating from otherwise dark corners make the warehouse setting feel unstable. Furthermore, the employment of a flying rig during “The Ballad of Jane Doe” is surreal. Jane, whose real identity is unknown, sings while upside down and in the dark, thus visually demonstrating how lost she feels.
The timing of the show can suspend the audience’s disbelief regarding such supernatural elements because Ride the Cyclonetakes place in the space between life and death: purgatory. Purgatory was popularized by Dante’s Divine Comedy, but other interpretations, especially between various religious denominations, exist as well. For example, one Christian principle from 1790 suggests purgatory is, “A place where souls are punished for a time for lesser sins, or for not having done full penance for the great sins they repented of,” (Charlton). Ride the Cycloneis anchored on the growth of its ensemble cast. Although they are not directly being punished, their unusual circumstance necessitates that they come to terms with their fates and better their understanding of one another. Before coming together, however, the characters are drawn to compete for their lives. Initially, the kids assume Karnak is the power fully in charge of who wins. The one who sings her solo, Ocean, decides to verbally attack all her peers to seem most suited to return to life due to her success. When Karnak reveals that the choir members must all vote unanimously on who to send back, the following songs become celebrations of life and may even evoke pity. The kids express their innermost secrets and desires for the first time out loud, all the while knowing their words might be the ticket back home.
Though Karnak claims to be impartial in the process, his overarching control over the situation and the numbers the kids perform makes him powerful. They say and do exactly what he imagines they will and, in hindsight, the final winner is outlined in his beginning prophecy. Professor Lorna Hutson writes, “Purgatory thus deals with the task of imagining Divine Judgment as omniscient and all-recording while at the same time accepting the inevitable inadequacy of human instruments for detecting and arbitrating degrees of inward guilt,” (Hutson 310). The choir members have a difficult time rehashing their lives and judging one another in the face of empathy and can make a decision only as a result of Karnak’s, the divine judge’s, pressure and subtle guidance. Meanwhile, the spectators of the show play a passive role in determining one’s guilt or, in this case, one’s eligibility to live again. Bodily co-presence, meaning when actors and audience members share a space, is inherent to theatre and makes the watchers’ interpretations vital to the storytelling. Hutson continues, “mimetic Renaissance drama invites the audience to speculate on and evaluate the motives and intentions embodied by actors as dramatis personae . The classic questions that have preoccupied generations of theater-Why does Hamlet delay? Did Gertrude know of the murder?–are themselves forensic questions that constitute intention as an aspect of evidence,” (Hutson 313). By taking it all in, the audience is naturally inclined to make their own decision on who they would vote for and predict the winner. The questions that Karnak asks each choir member during their “turn” in the game mirror what the audience is wondering, therefore encouraging them to consider how they process grief as well.
Despite the years gone by since its initial run, Ride the Cyclone ’s gradual addition of the aforementioned elements has granted it success. The Amazing Karnak makes for a mysterious narrator, while the accompanying music and design pieces revel in and enhance the mystery. The story itself is based, in part, on real grief, though the full-circle ending is overwhelmingly hopeful. In 2021, Ride the Cyclonewas able to record a cast recording for fans and future fans alike. Now, even more can enjoy the ride.
Works Cited
Charlton, William. “Purgatory.” New Blackfriars, vol. 102, no. 1099, 2021, pp. 339– 51,doi:10.1111/nbfr.12611.
Feingold, Ken. “OU: Interactivity as Divination as Vending Machine.” Leonardo (Oxford) , vol. 28, no. 5, 1995, pp. 399–402, doi:10.2307/1576224.
Hutson, Lorna. “From Penitent to Suspect: Law, Purgatory, and Renaissance Drama.”
Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 3/4, 2002, pp. 295–319. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3817977. Accessed 6 Dec. 2023.
Murphy, M. (2016). Bowie and a flooded amusement park: What inspired ‘Ride the cyclone’. New York: New York Times Company. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.purchase.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fblogs-podcasts-websites%2Fbowie-flooded-amusement-park-what-inspired-ride%2Fdocview %2F1850954124%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D14171