Ride The Cyclone, The Musical
The real High School Musical — in some sense, anyway. “Real” as in unapologetically, even gleefully marinated in teenage misery, as the six members of a sad high school choir in a small Canadian town each make the case for coming back to life following a disastrous roller coaster accident. You think being dead is bad; wait until you hear about their lives! Ba-dum. Thanks to the narrative assistance of the carnival’s fortune-telling robot, we get their catchphrases — “Democracy now!” “Sorry!” — all of which feed into their interactions and hence the plot mechanics. We also get their brief bios and consequent personas — “The most romantic boy in town,” “The most imaginative boy in town” — all of which feed into their self-revelation through song. (Most Romantic is a gay kid who wishes he was “that fucked-up girl” working as a doomed whore in 1920s France; Most Imaginative is a diseased loner whose only company — comic books and cats — combine to form a furry fantasy; the other stuff is, mostly, less sexy.) Alpha gal Ocean has to carry things a bit as the one who gets to act and change outside of her songs: “I thought my life had meaning; jokes on me! My death is really affecting me.” Happily, she’s up to the task, and her song “What the World Needs,” while the most socially offensive (as opposed to weird or bitter or sad), is also the most fun. (Alas, some of the others, which might have been in the running, get set back here and there due to the war between singers at the edge of their ranges and the volume of the recorded soundtrack.) Despite the hiccups, it mostly zips along toward its brand of happy ending. If there is a whiff of “Let’s put on a show” here, that’s fine — it’s young people, doing a show for fellow young people, and showing them what theater can do.