There is a specific kind of theatre that usually makes me break out in hives. You know the sort. It arrives with a “cult following” already attached, usually generated on TikTok, fueled by teenagers in eyeliner who have memorized every lyric before the cast has even entered the building. It screams “quirky.” It demands you love it for its weirdness rather than its quality.
So, when I headed down to the Southwark Playhouse Elephant to see Ride the Cyclone, I was armed with a healthy dose of skepticism. Maybe more than a dose. A bucketful.
The premise alone reads like something written on the back of a napkin at 3 a.m. by a goth drama student. Six members of a high school choir take a ride on a faulty rollercoaster – the Cyclone – and die. Horribly. They wake up in a carnival limbo, presided over by a mechanical fortune teller, and have to sing for the chance to be resurrected. Only one kid goes back. It’s The X Factor meets Final Destination.
It sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But here’s the annoying thing: I think I actually enjoyed it.
The Long Road from Victoria
We need to talk about where this thing came from, because it explains the flavour. This isn’t a polished West End product that’s been workshopped by Disney. It started life in 2009 in Victoria, British Columbia. That’s the fringe of the fringe. It’s been kicking around North America for over a decade, picking up obsessed fans like lint on a velvet jacket.
And you can feel that history in the fabric of the show. It has that scrappy, “let’s put on a show in a barn” energy, even though Lizzi Gee’s production here is slick enough. It doesn’t feel corporate. It feels like a weird little secret that’s suddenly been given a budget.
The Southwark Playhouse Elephant is the right home for it. That venue always feels a bit industrial, a bit provisional. It suits a story set in a dilapidated fairground. The set design does a lot of heavy lifting – rusted metal, flashing lights, the sense of a machine that hasn’t passed a safety inspection in twenty years.
The Mechanical Host
The evening is anchored by The Amazing Karnak, played by Edward Wu. He’s the machine. The narrator. Wu does a good job of moving like a wind-up toy that’s crying out for a squirt of WD-40. There’s a stiffness to him, a tragic obsolescence. He knows he’s going to die too (or break down, whatever machines do), which gives him a weird kinship with the dead kids.
But let’s be honest, nobody is buying a ticket for the narrator. They’re here for the dead kids.
The structure of the show is essentially a cabaret. And this is where my critic’s brain starts to itch a little. It’s formulaic. Karnak says, “You’re next,” the spotlight hits a kid, they sing a song explaining why they should live, and then we move on. It’s a talent show.
Usually, this kind of structure kills narrative momentum. You don’t get interactions; you get monologues set to music. You don’t see relationships develop; you see biographies listed in rhyme.
And yet, the songs are just chaotic enough to keep you watching.
The Line-Up
First up is Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg, played by Baylie Carson. She’s the “squeaky queen bee.” The overachiever. The girl who definitely reminded the teacher that they forgot to assign homework. We all went to school with an Ocean. Carson captures that frantic, desperate need to be the best, even at dying. Her song is a bundle of high-energy narcissism. It’s annoying, but it’s meant to be.
Then you have Noel Gruber (Damon Gould). This was the moment I realized the show wasn’t going to play it safe. Noel is the only gay kid in a small town, working at Taco Bell but dreaming of being a “hooker with a heart of black charcoal” in post-war France. His number is a fever dream of corsets and high kicks. It’s ludicrous. It’s tragic. It’s basically a mini-drag show in the middle of a teen tragedy. Gould sells it with a kind of desperate sleaze that is oddly touching.
Then there’s Mischa, the Ukrainian adoptee played by Bartek Kraszewski. He’s the “bad boy” rapper. Now, I’ll admit, this felt the most dated part of the show to me. The “angry white boy rap” trope feels very 2009. But Kraszewski has charisma to burn, and when he switches gears into a ballad about his internet girlfriend, there’s a sweetness there that catches you off guard.
But the show really gets weird – and I mean good weird – with Ricky. Jack Maverick plays the mute kid who lived in his own head. In death, he finds his voice, and it turns out his voice is a glam-rock space god. It’s a Bowie-esque, sequin-drenched fantasy about saving a cat planet. I sat there blinking, thinking, “What am I watching?” But Maverick commits so hard to the bit that you just go with it.
The Heart of the Matter
The emotional anchor, theoretically, is Constance (Robyn Gilbertson). She’s the “nice girl.” The one who didn’t hate her life, she just didn’t realize she loved it until the rollercoaster flew off the tracks. Gilbertson is making her professional debut here, which is wild because she’s incredibly assured. Her song is the closest the show gets to a traditional “I Want” song (or rather, “I Wanted” song). It’s about the beauty of the mundane. The smell of rain. The feeling of being alive. It’s sweet, if a little bit Hallmark.
But the image you’ll walk away with – the one that’s probably plastered all over Tumblr or whatever the kids use now – is Jane Doe.
Grace Galloway plays the unidentified body. She was decapitated in the accident. She enters carrying a doll’s head. She doesn’t know who she is. Her costume is like a cracked porcelain doll. It’s genuinely unsettling. Her song, “The Ballad of Jane Doe,” is a operatic, haunting aria that spins around the stage. It’s the moment the show stops being a joke and becomes a ghost story. Galloway’s voice is spectacular – eerie and high and terrified. It cuts through the campiness of the rest of the production and reminds you that, actually, these are children who died violently.
The Problem with the ride
So, the songs are bangers. The cast is talented. The design is cool. What’s my problem?
It comes back to the depth. Or the lack of it.
Because we spend the whole time cycling through solos, we never really get to see these kids talk to each other. We get snippets. Ocean insults everyone. Constance defends Ocean. But we don’t get the messy, tangled reality of high school friendships. We get archetypes. The Nerd. The Jock (or rapper, in this case). The Weirdo.
It feels, at times, like a concept album that’s been staged, rather than a fully fleshed-out musical. You learn everything you need to know about a character in the first thirty seconds of their song, and then they just repeat that point for three minutes.
Also, the humour is… specific. It’s very “internet.” It’s random for the sake of being random. A lot of the jokes rely on shock value or pop-culture references that might age like milk.
And there’s a tonal whiplash that takes some getting used to. One minute we’re laughing at a kid thrusting his pelvis in a corset, the next we’re contemplating the void of death and the tragedy of a life cut short. It’s emotional parkour.
Why it works anyway
But – and this is a big but – I think that disjointedness is kind of the point.
Being a teenager feels like tonal whiplash. Everything is hilarious and everything is the end of the world, simultaneously. Ride the Cyclone captures that specific adolescent energy better than a lot of “serious” plays I’ve seen.
It treats death with a shrug and a wink. It’s nihilistic, but it’s a cheerful nihilism. It says, “Yeah, life is random and cruel and you might die on a rollercoaster, but hey, look at these sequins.”
I found myself thinking about Cats. Stick with me here. Cats is another musical about a group of characters introducing themselves one by one, hoping to be chosen to go to a “Heaviside Layer” (resurrection). Ride the Cyclone is basically Cats for the Gen Z anxiety generation. But instead of Jellicles, we have dead choir kids. And honestly? I prefer the choir kids.
The Cult Phenomenon
It’s worth noting the audience, too. I don’t usually pay attention to who is sitting next to me, but at this show, it mattered. There were people mouthing the words. There were people dressed up.
It’s rare to see that kind of passion in a London theatre. Usually, we’re a polite, reserved bunch. We clap at the end, we maybe hum the tune on the tube home. But this show has tapped into something.
I think it’s the underdog spirit. The show itself is an underdog – a fringe oddity that defied the odds to get here. And the characters are underdogs. Even the popular girl is deeply insecure. They are all broken toys. And let’s face it, everyone feels like a broken toy these days.
A Note on the Production
Lizzi Gee’s direction deserves a nod for keeping the chaos contained. It could easily spiral into a mess. But she keeps the pace tight. The transitions between the carnival world and the fantasy sequences are sharp.
There’s a moment involving a projector and a screen that felt a bit lo-fi, a bit amateur dramatics, but weirdly, that added to the charm. If this show looked too expensive, it would lose its soul. It needs to look a bit like a ghost train that’s falling apart.
Should you buy a ticket?
Look, if you want Les Misérables, stay away. If you want a coherent plot with a three-act structure and deep character arcs, go see something else.
But if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief – and I mean really suspend it, hang it from the rafters – Ride the Cyclone is a ride worth taking.
It’s messy. It’s loud. It’s occasionally annoying. But it’s also fiercely original. In a West End landscape that is currently choked with movie adaptations and jukebox musicals, there is something refreshing about a show that is just purely, unapologetically its own weird self.
I walked out into the Elephant and Castle night, which is its own kind of chaotic carnival, and I found I wasn’t thinking about the plot holes. I was thinking about Jane Doe spinning in the air. I was thinking about the space cat god.
And I was thinking that, actually, for a show about death, it makes a pretty compelling argument for being alive. Even if it is just to see what weird nonsense people will come up with next.
It runs until January 10th. Go on. It won’t kill you. Probably.
